The entire class – along with PC, who was calling himself Tom Mortimer – squeezed into a tiny yellow mini. Former PhD candidate LK took the wheel.

We bumped across the Edinburgh cobbles into Moray Place. When I pointed out that our destination was at the other end of the New Town, LK turned right into Forres Street. Her intention was to take a left turn at the junction with Queen Street.

‘This won’t work!’ I shouted from the back seat. ‘There are bollards at the top’.

‘That doesn’t bother me’, replied LK, somehow weaving the car between them, then travelling along the pavement for a few yards before joining the stream of traffic heading east along Queen Street.

Suddenly from the right, a yellow taxi swept in front of us and forced LK to bring the mini to a halt back on the pavement again. The taxi driver declared that he had all the footage necessary to convict LK of dangerous driving, and that we were all about to be arrested as her conspirators.