As I was recently asked a lot of suspicious questions at Swiss border control (do I look like an illegal immigrant or someone planning to overthrow your government?!) I confess to much schadenfreude coming across this anecdote in John Mortimer’s memoirs:
“[It] became clear that the chemical constituent of the drug was being imported from Europe and Interpol was alerted. In fact it came from Switzerland and a car was stopped at the border by police who had seen ‘The French Connection’, a film in which a car hiding drugs is systematically taken to pieces. The gendarmerie spent two days dismantling every bit of the car, and blowing down every tube and pipe, which they laid out on a garage floor. Afer a minute and lengthy examination, the verdict was ‘pas de stupefiants’, and the young chemists were allowed to go on their way with a briefcase full of the forbidden chemical on the passenger seat.”
(Eventually, the LSD ring was arrested and John Mortimer represented its leader The client complained to him.)
′ “They searched my apartment. They took away all my papers. They even analysed my mother.”
“They did what?”
“Oh sure. You see, I kept my mother’s ashes in a pot on the mantelpiece. They took it away, I guess, to analyse it.”
He has guessed right. Later I find that his mother has been tested at the forensic science laboratory in Reading to see whether she might be a hallucinogenic drug.′
(John Mortimer, Murderers and Other Friends.)
Best of the Transparent Hummingbird