THE closest most of us get to high-speed chases and catching criminals is watching adrenaline-pumping police dramas from the safety of our favourite armchairs, writes Vivienne Franicis.

Part of the attraction of the ever-popular cop series from Starsky and Hutch to The Bill is that after all that heart-racing excitement you can switch off and make a nice cup of cocoa safe in the knowledge that the good guys caught their man and the streets are secure again.

But as a rookie policewoman with the Met, Jane Spivey was often at the heart of real-life drama.

Jane, 23, spent five months with the police force pounding the beat in London's Belgravia after completing a rigorous training programme.

Jane, of Bramhope, said: "It was pretty scary you never knew what was going to happen. The main problem was homelessness and all the problems that go along with that, such as drug taking and shoplifting. There were a few robberies and pick-pocketing was a big problem but thankfully there were no major things like murder."

Jane, who has now left the force, initially wanted to put her writing skills to the test and train as a journalist but was later drawn to exercise the strong arm of the law.

She said: "I wanted to do a job that was satisfying and would enable me to help others and it seemed the perfect choice."

After leaving college Jane applied to the police and was accepted on their four-month training course.

She said: "First of all you have to go for an interview with two officers and then you have to go back for a physical. There is so much competition I was surprised to hear back and then surprised to pass my interview and the physical. I had never been to the gym before but I started going as often as I could and then I had the interview six months later."

Jane moved to the police training centre at Hendon after being accepted at the Met as she spent her early childhood in Edgware, North London.

Competition to successfully complete both the practical role-plays and weekly written tests was intense - and not everybody graduated at the end of the four months.

Jane said: "In my intake there were 160 people from all around the country and 30 of these didn't make it. You have to do lots of practicals and role plays. You have people acting as criminals and witnesses and you have to go in and sort it out. The first one was so nerve-wracking because you go in and someone is watching you.

"Some people found it absolutely stressful but I thought it was great. There were 20 people in our group and you end up getting really close. You are all staying away from your family as well. You all have meals together and everything."

Jane qualified with flying colours and her family came to watch her and the rest of the successful trainees at a Passing Out parade.

She said: "You march around to a brass band and the families come and watch. A lot of people get quite emotional on that day."

Along with eight other people from her intake Jane was stationed at Belgravia, keeping law and order in Victoria and Kensington.

Jane initially found flying solo on the streets of London a daunting task - and was not prepared for the effect her uniform would have on the public.

Jane said: "There were nine of us and we each had a tutor who took us out and talked us through things. Then after a couple of weeks you paired up together and started going out just the two of you. It was completely different. You were so used to having people there who would step forward and help you.

"It was quite surprising because the majority of people have a lot of respect for you. It was hard getting used to being called officer. There is the odd person who looks at you in a certain way. They see you as a uniform not as a human being."

Jane enjoyed putting her training into practice but became disillusioned with the quality of life afforded by her rookie's wages.

She said: "A lot of it was to do with the accommodation. On paper the money looks quite good but it leaves you very little to pay rent on a decent house in Central London. I was living in Soho in police accommodation. It was like a halls of residence and the only things you were provided with was one room with a sink and a bed and it was really grotty."

Poor accommodation was not the only reason which led Jane to hand in her badge - she was tired of keeping up a long-distance relationship with her boyfriend Alan Maybury, who plays for Leeds United.

Jane said: "I was coming home on the train every time I could to see my boyfriend and I was forever living out of bags. It is the kind of job you need to be really dedicated to because if you arrest someone in your last hour of work you have to stay for seven hours to do the paperwork. When I went down there we had been together for six months but it was really difficult."

Unlike some footballers' girlfriends, Jane, who now lives with Alan in Bramhope, is unwilling to dish the dirt on players behaviour off the pitch.

She said only: "It is important to support what your partner does for a living and you can't help but get involved and it is good to understand what they are going through."

The couple met when Jane worked as a waitress at TGI Fridays, in Leeds - and had never been to a football match.

Jane has now decided to follow her schoolgirl ambitions and has traded in tracing criminals for tracking down scoops by retraining as a journalist.

Jane said: "I really enjoy the satisfaction starting something from scratch and seeing it in print. In some ways it is similar to being a policewoman. You have to be good at dealing with people and be sympathetic in some ways. You also have to take down information and translate it in an understandable way."

Who knows, Jane may end up pounding a new beat on Fleet Street.....

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.