It was him, Officer!

I've been having a tidy-up in my study recently and, over the weekend, I came across some extraordinary images. 

My involvement with the TV show QI began shortly after my first book, Joined-Up Thinking, was published and while I still had a year or so to go before retiring from the police service. My first ever contributions were to the QI 'F' Annual - in those days, the show brought out an annual every Christmas. Sadly, they only did a few as (a) it was a lot of hard work - we'd set ourselves the rule that all of the material would be new stuff not seen on the show, and, (b) it made no money. Everyone involved - the BBC, Talkback (production company), the publishers, and the agents who managed the comedians and use of their images - wanted a share, meaning there was nothing left for the people who actually wrote the book. That said, we found enough content every year to warrant having editorial meetings to sort the wheat from the chaff. 

For the 'F' Annual, I contributed some content that made it into book and some that didn't. One feature that didn't was a policing-themed bunch of facts under the title of Fuzzy Firsts. To accompany the piece, I engaged the help of a colleague of mine, police forensic artist Jan 'Boris' Szymczuk. 

I got him to interview several people to get their descriptions of three supposed 'suspects'. He didn't know, at this time, that I was doing work for QI. And the witnesses were told not to give any clues and to offer no other information other than to answer Boris's questions. Here are the three pictures he created based solely on those interviews.

Would Alan Davies, Stephen Fry and I get arrested as the result of these being posted publicly, I wonder? 

Some police artist sketches come in for a bit of stick from the public but this is unfair.

'The main thing to grasp is that it's not supposed to be a portrait, or a piece of art,' Boris explained. 'It's much easier recognising someone again than describing them bit by bit. What we're looking for here is what's called a 'type likeness' - it's just a visual likeness, not a copy - a bit like putting a jigsaw together as they hand me the pieces. I'm just the witness's pen and pencils - their toolbox.' 

Most witnesses get only a fleeting glimpse of a suspect during what is often a traumatic incident. And people like Boris simply have to draw what they're told to draw. 

'I can't go beyond what someone tells me, even if I think it looks horrible or daft,' he explained. 'You see pictures on TV looking terrible, but if the witness says "Stop. That's him!", then that is him. I can usually tell within 20 minutes if they're going to be any good.' 

The prevalence of CCTV has now negated some of the work of the forensic artist. And they now have electronic e-fit imaging systems too. But it's interesting to see just how they used to do things.

When it went well, it went well. Other times, maybe not (none of these are by Boris!)

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