Meet the former Yorkshire policeman Alfie Moore who swapped the beat for stand-up

He vividly remembers growing up in the Attercliffe area of the Steel City. “My older brother Steve and I stood out from the rest of the crowd because of our accents. My parents had decided to take up that offer of a £10 passage to Australia, and the entire family took the boat over. For some reason or other, we came back about four years later. Heaven knows why – I mean, being on a golden beach in Oz, taking in all that sunshine, and returning to South Yorkshire, well, it was no contest, was it? Anyway, when we arrived, Steve and I were kitted out for summer weather, with our short trousers, and we’d also acquired an Aussie accent, so we stood out from the rest of the kids. There were, shall we say, a fair few scraps, and there were few days when one or other of us didn’t go home with a black eye or a bruise or two. Mind you, he was pretty handy, and he was also being protective of me. It’s funny talking about it all now, but back then….well, I can’t honestly tell you that schooldays were a bundle of fun. I was the class clown; he was the one who held his own

He left school at just 15. “I was just terrible.” he admits. “I was supposed to leave at 16, but I got out about a month before that, without a single O Level to my name. Nothing. At least Steve had managed one of them – in metalwork, I believe. Ironically, my own first job was as an apprentice welder, and in those days, you were tied into a firm to learn your trade for four years. That was it. Such was my luck that, just as that apprenticeship came to an end, and on my 20th birthday, there was a steel strike, the recession started, and I was made redundant. That’s not a day I’m likely to forget for a while!” For some reason, he decided to apply to join the police. “Looking back”, he reflects, “it was a miracle that I was accepted, because I suffer from dyslexia. Not something that, back then, was recognised properly, or addressed as a problem. But I got in, went to a really tough training camp, and then became a constable on the beat. How times have changed. You’d be out on foot patrol – and not allowed to use a car – and every now and then a sergeant would appear out of the blue, and he’d check where you were, and your notebook. Which he’d sign, and then he’d send you on your way. If you had a mate who was in a patrol car, and you decided to sit with him, in the warm, you had to hide in the well under the front seat, so that you weren’t spotted. If that happened, there were consequences, believe me.” After qualifying, Alfie got disillusioned for a while, and left the force to go back into the steel industry. “I drove the cranes which was pretty good going for someone who isn’t that keen on heights. Then one day I realised that I wanted to get back into the police.’”

How did he cope with the dyslexia? “You find a way,” he says quietly. “Anyone else who has the condition will know what I mean. When I became a sergeant, for example, I’d be given reports by the junior officers, and I’d find them difficult to read. So, I’d say to them things like ‘ Tell me what happened, I want to know’, so I’d get the verbal account, rather than the linear one. And I also found that I could write in my own way.” Slowly, Alfie made his way up the ranks, and successfully completed his examinations to become Inspector, but it also dawned on him that he was a born storyteller. He plucked up the courage to book a slot as a stand-up comedian, just to try his luck. It wasn’t just any old slot, however. Alfie took his chances at the Edinburgh Festival. He laughs: “That really makes it sound really glamorous an ‘big time’, doesn’t it, but in fact it was one of those venues that was, in fact, a Portakabin in a pub car park, and which had room for about 20 people, maximum. But the lucky thing was that, one evening, a wonderful lady from the BBC called Alison Vernon-Smith was in the audience, and after the show, she stayed back, and told me that I really should pitch my ideas to them. Another turning point was doing a gig with Rhod Gilbert – I think it was somewhere really fancy like a room over a curry house – and he was just about to make it big. He liked the act, and he very kindly asked what I did as a full-time job. I said ‘Rhod, I’m a police officer’, and he looked at me and just said ‘You must have a fund of stories from that, mate, why don’t you talk about them?’ I’ve told him since how grateful I am for his pivotal advice. I truly am”.

From there, it’s been a steady climb to the top. Alfie first appeared on the ITV series Show me the Funny, with Jason Manford, then came gigs on The Wright Stuff, appearances on the Jeremy Vine Show. And that BBC pitch also delivered, for Alfie’s BBC Radio 4 show It’s a Fair Cop will have its eighth series next year. In it, he takes a situation or an encounter from his police career, and asks the audience what they would do in similar circumstances. Their reactions are spontaneous – and the interaction between them and Alfie is often hilariously funny. He’s now a regular at the Edinburgh Festival as well, with award-winning shows like The Naked Stun and Getting Away with Murder, but these days the venues are considerably larger than a Portakabin, and they sell-out almost as soon as they are advertised.

He has, he says, the utmost respect for today’s police forces but he has little respect at all for many of the cop shows he sometimes sees on TV. “I can’t watch them,” he says. “There are so many things wrong with them. Vera is a bugbear of mine.”

Alfie says that he’s never had anyone in the audience come up to confess after a show that they were once nicked by PC Moore. “Although I was doing a gig in Manchester once, and this lad, shaven head, tattoos on his neck, and a real hard case, came across the room after the lights went up, and I prepared myself for the very worse. He looked me up and down, and then he said: “I’ve been arrested a few times, I’ve been to prison, and I know what you were talking about. Thanks mate, that was a really good evening, well done!’ To say I was surprised, and also relieved, was something of an understatement!”

Alfie Moore: Fair Cop Unleashed. Otley Courthouse, January 21 and April 8; Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, March 3; Northallerton Forum, March 24; and Selby Town Hall, April 7. alfiemoore.com