{"id":288740,"date":"2025-07-24T20:01:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T20:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/288740\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T20:01:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T20:01:12","slug":"police-arrest-shoplifter-with-help-from-the-old-bill-actor-southampton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/288740\/","title":{"rendered":"Police arrest shoplifter with help from the old Bill actor | Southampton"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-16w5gq9\">The actor who played PC Reg Hollis in the TV series <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/tv-and-radio\/the-bill\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Bill<\/a> has helped real-life police officers arrest a shoplifter who was trying to escape on a bicycle.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-16w5gq9\">Jeff Stewart, who played Hollis for 24 years in the long-running ITV drama, sat on the suspect\u2019s legs while officers handcuffed him after he had fallen off the bike in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/uk-news\/southampton\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Southampton<\/a>, Hampshire, on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-16w5gq9\">Mohamed Diallo, 29, of Southampton, was charged with five counts of theft, to which he pleaded guilty at Southampton magistrates court on Thursday. He was bailed to be sentenced on 29 August.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-16w5gq9\">A Hampshire constabulary spokesperson said: \u201cIn policing you should always expect the unexpected, but this really wasn\u2019t on The Bill for this week. Officers making an arrest in Southampton were aided by none other than TV\u2019s PC Reg Hollis during an incident on Wednesday 23 July.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jeff Stewart as PC Reg Hollis in a scene from The Bill in 2007. Photograph: FremantleMedia\/Rex Features<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-16w5gq9\">The spokesperson said \u201cofficers pounced to make their arrest\u201d of Diallo after he fell off the bike while trying to escape. \u201cTo their surprise, local TV legend Jeff Stewart \u2026 came to their aid by sitting on the suspect\u2019s legs while officers put him in cuffs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-16w5gq9\">\u201cLong since retired from Sun Hill station \u2013 but he\u2019s still got it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-16w5gq9\">Diallo was convicted of the theft of \u00a317.25 worth of coffee from a Co-op on 23 July, the theft of \u00a369.90 worth of coffee and food items on 17 July, and of \u00a354.50 of alcohol and coffee on 14 July. He also admitted stealing \u00a380 of wine from a Sainsbury\u2019s on 14 July and \u00a363 of alcohol on 22 April.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-16w5gq9\">The Bill, which ran from 1984 until 2010, followed the professional and personal lives of officers and detectives from the fictional Sun Hill area of east London.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The actor who played PC Reg Hollis in the TV series The Bill has helped real-life police officers&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-288740","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114909995511603783","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}