Now, I like a folk hero as much as the next man, and I’ve seen Rambo many times. But even I, with my admittedly warped and childish sense of what’s important in life, find it a bit difficult to comprehend why people are coming out in support of Raoul Moat.

Cinema is full of charismatic outsiders who lead the law a merry dance. I’ve already mentioned Rambo, Sylvester Stallone’s emotionally-wounded war veteran who takes to the hills with cops in pursuit. Then there’s the cult 1971 hit Vanishing Point, in which anti-hero Kowalski tries to drive from Colarado to San Francisco in 15 hours, breaking pretty much every state law along the way, with every cop in America on his tail. Even Smokey And The Bandit was a salutory lesson in anti-authoritarian fun.

Raoul Moat was not Rambo or Burt Reynolds’s Bandit. He was a bloke with severe problems and a gun who refused to be rehabilitated and was terrorising the public before he’d even digested his last prison dinner.

People with a better insight into the human condition than me have already combed through the shattered psyche of Raoul Moat to come up with reasons why he did what he did and what should happen now.

Moat’s dead and gone – as, sadly, is his victim Chris Brown – but that doesn’t stop people with a rather shaky grasp on what’s right and proper muscling in on the affair.

I’m talking about those who have left flowers at the scene of his death and messages of support for what he did on internet sites.

Real life isn’t like the movies. Folk heroes who stick two fingers up to the establishment and do their own thing can and do exist, but they cross over from “maverick outsider” to “nutjob murderer” when they start getting dangerously delusional and blasting shotguns at members of the public.

Who can support what Raoul Moat has done? Friendless weirdos who fill the holes in their lives by getting psychotically attached to killers. Immature toads who want to be “controversial”. Idiots who once got caught for speeding and think anyone with a grudge against the police is some kind of public-spirited warrior. Right-wing libertarians who think there’s too much Government control in our lives and we should be able to do what we like, when we like, without fear of police interference. In a nutshell, the people who support Raoul Moat and what he did are not really the sort of people you’d want to know.

What Moat did is tragic, stark reality, not Hollywood action. The sad thing is, though, that right at this moment someone, somewhere will have pound signs in their eyes and will be attempting to make art imitate life imitating art as they draw up plans for Raoul Moat: The Movie.