I have to go to court this week… but no, I haven’t done anything wrong. I’ll explain,…

I had a brief ‘dabbling’ with the courts system a good few years ago when I was arrested by a rookie garda in Dublin city centre. At the time, I was in a group of people walking up a main street in the city. Without going into too much detail, a few guys in our group (whom I didn’t know) started causing hassle with some club bouncers, who then called the gardaí – a number of whom showed up and started – naturally – asking us to clear away from the area.

Having no wish to get in trouble, I started to leave – but stopped for a chat with another of the gardaí present, actually asking him to explain a section of a legal act that I was curious about – and that another garda had quoted me previously – and he was happy to oblige, explaining it in detail. I got the feeling from him that he realised that I was just a bystander, not involved in the incident at the club door, but while he was chatting with me, the first garda – a trainee – the one who had originally instructed me to move on – came over and formally arrested me for being drunk and disorderly and not moving on when asked.