This year’s shortlist for the Ronnie Hutton Memorial Prize

Usually at this time of the year I’m busy at home compiling entrants for the Ronnie Hutton Memorial Prize, a prestigious award which goes to whatever police force has made the most fatuous arrest under the new and superfluous ‘race hate’ legislation. You may not remember, but Ronnie Hutton was the Scottish motorist who, several years ago, spent two days in prison and was fined £150 for the crime of ‘revving his car in a racist manner’. Mr Hutton revved his car in a busy street and two Muslim people took offence and that was it. I have to admit that I am not a fan of gratuitous car-revving and usually shout some sort of abuse, although obviously not racist abuse, when people do it near me. But it never occurs to me that the driver might be revving his car out of racial hatred.

Anyway, this is an important award and hotly contested by police forces up and down the country. This year, after sifting through the entries, I had decided it should go to Hampshire Police, for their salutary arrest of a pub singer called Simon Ledger who offered his audience a rendition of the old Carl Douglas hit ‘Kung Fu Fighting’, which the old bill decided could possibly be of offence to any Chinese people who might be listening, which they weren’t. I had the certificate made out and everything and now, at the last moment, have had a change of mind. Because I came across the remarkable case of Rhea Page and the chance to add a subtle twist to this year’s award.

Rhea was walking with her boyfriend through the centre of the fragrant and idyllic multicultural nirvana which is Leicester when she was the subject of an unprovoked attack from four young Somali women.