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A shocking discovery from the BBC News archives.
"Yesterday a police officer heard a strange ticking noise emanating from the vehicle parked in Marylebone and received a nasty shock when he touched it," reported the BBC on 23 February 1963, "A sergeant also jumped when he came to see what shocked the constable and sparks flew when an inspector turned up to give his opinion on the situation."
They'd just fallen foul of an unchartered traffic violation: farmer Peter Hicks had electrified his Land Rover so that it gave anyone who touched it a juddering dose of 2,000 volts (as he put it "harmless, apart from a bit of a flash and a nasty jog"). And if they happened to be a newfangled traffic warden — the first had started patrolling London's streets in earnest in 1960, following the introduction of the parking meter here in 1958 — then so be it.
Hicks, who lived in Sussex but regularly drove to London in order to sell his produce at Covent Garden Market, originally fixed his vehicle with equipment designed for electric fences, in order to frighten off cattle on the farm. The farmer — who was also an artist, pilot, power boat racer and jockey — then reasoned that the device might also work on the kerbs of central London, as a defence mechanism against would-be thieves. 'Entirely incidentally' said Hicks, it also turned out to be a dab hand at keeping pesky traffic wardens at bay.
"Don't you think it's rather irresponsible to use this sort of electric shock treatment to keep traffic wardens away when you are illegally parked anyway?" a BBC reporter asked Hicks. "No, I don't at all..." reasoned the farmer, adding that, with the 50 lorries he was also parking up, he was receiving £30 in fines a week. By parking the lorries bumper-to-bumper behind the Land Rover, however, he was able to electrify the entire fleet. "I've watched quite a few wardens cop it, trying to put a ticket on my truck. They gave up in disgust — and shock!" Hicks said. "I think it's a jolly good device."
London police didn't concur. After a 'long chat' with Hicks, they confiscated the offending device for nine months. It was eventually returned to him, with no charges pressed. Hicks said that he wouldn't be using it anymore anyway; perhaps by this point, London's traffic wardens recognised the Land Rover registration, and knew to give it a wide berth.
The electrified Land Rover was not the only mode of transport with which Hicks courted controversy. He also liked to pick up his son Charlie from school in an ex-American Army helicopter. "One day I was summoned to the headmaster who said he'd had complaints from the ground staff and could my father please park his helicopter somewhere else?" Charlie later recalled to the BBC.
