Transporting body parts? Your questions answered!

As a youth worker on some of Buckinghamshire’s meaner streets (Stoke Poges, if you must know), I am often asked how best to transport body parts by car without drawing the attention of the Police.

The best method is as follows, assuming that your cargo is in the boot and that no EU, Health and Safety or other guidelines with regard to its transportation have been breached (in which case may the full force of the Law and the very Fires Of Hell consume you without mercy and forever).

Carry a pot of adequately watered herbs – basil, coriander, flat-leaf parsley or such like – in a prominent position, for example on the dashboard or the passenger seat. (They can be bought quite cheaply at supermarkets or dug up from neighbours’ gardens; make sure that you remove any labels first.)

If you are stopped by the Police, you will find that they will show great interest in the herbs. They will spend some time sniffing them, feeling them, holding them up to the light at various angles and squinting at you from various angles too. Let them do this for a short while.

When you see them nodding to each other in a conspiratorial fashion it is time to make your move. Do not delay. Pleasantly, and without condescension, inform them of the true identity of the herbs. Make light of their error - it is, after all, of no moment - and carefully enlist their embarrassment to steer the conversation in a direction that suits your purpose.

If this is done with skill and nerve you will find yourself sooner than expected swapping recipes, at which point you may consider the job done. They are by now no more likely to look in your boot than they are to arrest your dead grandmother for soliciting.

You drive off with a cheery wave which they repay in full measure. They do not even notice the trail of red spots as you leave. You have not only got off Scot free, but you may well now have in your culinary locker some long overdue variants on the fava beans-and-Chianti formula, which is now so 20th century, I find. Even in Stoke Poges.

Bon appetit!