Planes, Passports and Porkie Pies – Slice One

Stirring Tales of UK Border Control (but not as shown on TV)

by Mike Clarke

Mike Clarke worked for 18 years in Immigration Control in London’s larger airports, the last 9 as a Chief Immigration Officer. In his time there, he encountered every scenario you could imagine – and some you’d never dream of! Planes, Passports and Porkie Pies – Slice One details the ups and downs of his working life: queues and crises, joy and despair, cock-ups, punch-ups, forgers, robbers, liars, lovers, thugs, drugs and always the poorest of the poor. Join Mike as he recounts just some of his more memorable moments, from a man wearing a suit filled with £80,000 cash to his part in the truly shocking sudden death of the Russian Atomic Clock. Planes, Passports and Porkie Pies is a hilarious memoir that will particularly appeal to those familiar with the immigration sector, as well as anyone who has ever suffered at the hands of mindless bureaucracy.

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About the Author

Mike Clarke

Job-wise, most of what I choose readily to recall, whether with pleasure or with pain, is already in the 2 Slices, although there's a bit more of domestics in the novel 'Dog Strap Five' (Vol.1 soon I hope to be published, and Vol.2 about to be written).

Otherwise, I have enthusiastically re-embraced general, idle, swanning around - barring my dog,no-one swans more successfully, more generally or more idly than me - and my only vague current concern, arguably not before time, is my health, which I think is best described like this.

Heart (attack, then triple by-pass), stroke (but only mini), diabetes (but only borderline), and now liver (though fuck knows what exactly, because they're still working on it) don't particularly worry me, because they're only practices for Death.

What does, just a tad (worry me, I mean) is that any day now, all that practice will suddenly prove bloody perfect, but that's life.