A researcher working for satellite TV's 'Ancestry Channel' announced yesterday that he'd successfully identified the last remaining blood relative of legendary Baker Street sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, and that in an extraordinary twist, the gentleman in question happens to be a police officer.
"He's a serving officer with the Metropolitan Police," the researcher, Rob Lennox told a group of agitated journalists, in the Salmon And Ball pub, in East London's trendy Bethnal Green. "Although rather disappointingly, for me at least, he isn't a DCI in the Flying Squad, or a Chief Super in the Anti-Terrorism Unit, or even a Murder Squad supersleuth. It's all a bit deflating really. He's just regular plod. A PC working out of Paddington Green nick, whose most exciting career moment came when he saw George Michael driving down Praed Street in the summer of 1992, whilst not being under the influence of anything."
The descendant was finally revealed to be PC Jack Dixon, who when finally tracked down by the press pack at his home in Loddiges Road, Hackney, told reporters that he was: "Out for a bit, on the sick."
"He's always off sick," a neighbour confided. "I don't think I've seen him in uniform more than half a dozen times since I moved down here five years ago. I remember during the riots last year, I pleaded with him to help, as the mob were setting wheelie bins alight, but he said he had a bad back."
Our reporter, Reg Johnson, failed to secure a meeting with Dixon, but was able to obtain a mobile number for PC Dixon via a contact at Paddington Green, and managed to speak to Sherlock Holmes's last surviving descendant.
"It was a brief conversation," Johnson reported. "He told me that he was off sick again, and that he was shortly to be retired from the police service on the grounds of chronic dyspepsia. Not being a medical man, I asked him if that was related to his lower back problem? He said: 'No. It's alimentary dear Johnson.'"
More as we get it.
