Chief Miekelson: Surely Police Scotland can't take any offence?

He was the star of Scot Squad, a mockumentary comedy series about a fictional-ish national police force, made in fly-on-the-wall style. 

Its eighth and final season aired last year, but the BBC has announced a new spin-off, The Chief, in which Miekelson will doubtless appal and delight with four episodes of his very own.

He’s a pompous fellow who boasts of his own modesty, and keenly appreciates his own dim brilliance. However, even his most ardent detractors grudgingly admire his canny ability to avoid being sacked.

When not playing carpet golf in his office, he struggles with contemporary policing dilemmas, determined to remain relevant in an increasingly mad society. 

He believes strongly in preventative policing – “catching a bam before they’re a bam” – and, in his spare time, writes novels about a police officer named Michael Cameronson.

Played to perfection by Jack Docherty, Miekelson’s is without doubt an authentic, easily recognisable Edinburgh tone, all shaky respectability and bluff.

He’s not a complete Edinburgh stereotype, though, for oddly enough he’s a passionate supporter of Hibs. 

In Edinburgh mythology, police officers, along with prison guards, traffic wardens, insurance clerks, people on the lower rungs of finance, line dancers, and cardigan retailers gravitate towards Hearts, while poet-warriors, intellectuals, novelists, philosophers, lifeguards, pilots, and people in the caring professions gravitate towards Hibs.

Evergreen talent
Perhaps, here, the character has been influenced by the player, with Embra-man Docherty a big Hibbie himself. But there’s even more to him than that. 

He wrote for Spitting Image for four series between 1984 and 1987, contributing also to Alas Smith And Jones and The Lenny Henry Show. He was script editor for the first series of Vic Reeves Big Night Out.

However, before Miekelson, he was best known for Absolutely, the cult Scottish sketch show that ran from 1989 to 1992 on Channel 4. Here, he played MacGlashan, an ardent Scottish nationalist who cycles to the border to shout abuse at the English. 

He also played a councillor in Stoneybridge, a couthy wee provincial Scottish anytown that considered putting in a bid to hold the Olympics, despite fearing “an influx of other people”. 

In its mooted presentation, the town’s only proclaimed attraction was its … stony bridge.

In 1997, Docherty was part of the launch of Channel 5, becoming a five-nights-a-week chat show host with The Jack Docherty Show. His own show! Now his alter ego is getting one too. One dreads what misadventures and faux pas await. 

Already, on Scot Squad, these have included, in a special internet short, finding that a banning order from an incident at Wembley 40 years earlier, when he took part in a pitch invasion following an England v Scotland game, was still in place. To no avail, he remonstrates: “It wasn’t hooliganism. It was patriotism.”

Nicola Sturgeon has a chat with Scotland's top (fictional) cop

Something fishy
EXERCISED by criminals giving false names, he says of the then-First Minister: “Nicola Sturgeon? Aye, and I’m Harry Haddock.” In season four, discussing a drug-running boat ditching its cargo in the sea off Stonehaven, he asks: “Have you any idea what happens to a shoal of haddock on three tonne of Charlie? You’ve got crabs attacking seals …”

Further discussing drug crime, he makes an ill-advised smoking gesture and refers to “just having a wee doobie”. His series of apologies to various offended groups went viral on YouTube. Apologising to one offended group at a press conference, he succeeds only in offending another one, which continues ad infinitum.

Thus, apologising for using the expression “Chinese whispers”, he understands why that community went “completely mental”, leading to an apology to mental health campaigners, leading to another apology for talking about “getting a fiver out of an Aberdonian”, during which he talks about “the blind leading the blind”, occasioning another apology where he says that community’s concerns “will not fall on deaf ears”, requiring another apology where he declares he “nearly had a fit”, leading to an apology to epileptics, who understandably “had a bee in their bonnet”, incurring an apology to “the wider bee community”, during which a reference to “two bald men fighting over a comb” causes offence to the glabrous, to whom he apologises with a reference to killing “two birds with one stone”, leading to an apology “to the entire avian community”.

He’s regularly shown talking to his secretary Jean (who is never seen nor heard) and is a fan of Lulu. However, he hates the fire service, deeming them lazy and irresponsible.

In 2019, unsurprisingly billed as “Scotland’s Fairest Man”, he interviewed Scottish political leaders, including the aforementioned Ms Sturgeon, above, for an election special, sharing leadership notes and offering campaigning tips.

Miekelson opined of this role: “Who knows, maybe being around the most successful public figure in modern history will rub off on the politicians in positive ways? When it comes to the General Election, forget the polls and listen to the polis.”

Top of the cops
AHEAD of the final series, Docherty revealed that the head of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Mark Rowley, lived just two streets away from his London home.

Which was handy as, in the first episode, Miekelson applies for that very job. Said Docherty: “I see him [Rowley] walking about all the time and I keep meaning to … ask him for some tips on how to get the top job. But he’d probably be pressing a panic alarm in his pocket.”

Miekelson was “loosely based on any number of former Police Scotland chiefs,” including the first, Sir Stephen House, who ironically had also been in the running for head of the Met. According to Docherty, cops in England love the Chief too: “No matter how much we pushed it or how ridiculous we made his initiatives, the real police would always tell us, ‘It’s much worse in real life’.”

No doubt there’s worse to come in the new series, of which Docherty has said: “We find him clinging to his job as the top dog, the big man, the numero uno in a modern, progressive Scottish police force. He’s desperate to prove he’s still relevant in the world of office politics, culture wars, family and fatherhood.”