Joey Barton hasn’t been the only footballer in the hands of the law over the past couple of weeks because I’ve been spending a bit of time with the boys in blue, too. Although I should point out that mine was out of choice. Let me explain.

My friend John is a grand fromage at Hammersmith & Fulham nick and I’ve been helping him out with a local initiative called the Safer Neighbourhoods Annual Challenge (thesnac.com). It’s all about encouraging youngsters in the borough to take responsibility for making it a safer place – a great project that I’m really glad to be involved with.

To cut a long story short, John asked me to attend this year’s SNAC launch at a school in Hammersmith, which I was more than happy to do, and as a thank-you he offered to sort out the transport to the school . . . police style.

So there I was, assuming I’d be getting a little ride in a police car. But no. John had a little more up his sleeve. First I was asked to head to an address in Epping Forest, which turned out to be one of the Met’s helicopter bases. Now, I’m not too bad with helicopters. I’d been in one over Manhattan before and loved it, so I was quite excited at the prospect of a flight across town.

Given my hatred of traffic (I’m the kind of person who has to turn off and go around the back streets even if that takes me way off course and makes the journey 20 times longer), I’ve now decided that helicopter is the only way to get around London. It puts my fold-up bike to shame in the traffic-beating stakes.

But I think I spoke too soon when marvelling to the pilot about the speed at which we were getting across the city. I was happily looking down at the Emirates Stadium and all of a sudden the radio starts going – reports of a guy being chased through some unsecured buildings in a factory complex in Essex. Next thing I know the pilot pulls the helicopter equivalent of a handbrake turn and we’re hotfooting it to the factory to try to help to spot the offender. It was like being involved in a real-life version of Where’s Wally, the children’s book.

Despite circling the same area for half an hour, we didn’t find our man. But just when I was expecting to get back to our tour of London football grounds from the air, the radio started again and we were heading to a park in North Finchley in search of some nutter with a baseball bat who had been involved in a domestic. Unfortunately, we didn’t find him, either, and by now the clock was ticking if we were going to get to the SNAC launch.

Before long we were down on the ground at Battersea heliport, where I was met by the next mode of transport laid on by the boys in blue – a riot van. Nice. Despite my persistent attempts to convince the driver otherwise, the lights and sirens were not put on – inappropriate use of police resources, apparently. But we could have done with them. By now the London rush hour was starting to kick in and trying to get up the Fulham Palace Road towards Hammersmith was testing my traffic tolerance.

So a call was made and all of a sudden we were pulling up outside Craven Cottage to be met by a couple of officers on police mountain bikes – with a spare one for me. So I pulled on a standard-issue Met Police luminous top (a bit uncomfortable because it made me feel as if I was playing an away game for Chelsea), jumped on and pedalled off to Hammersmith.

The good news is that we reached the school in time for the launch and saw the children put on an amazing show. But my police transport-fest wasn’t over. Leaving the premises, I was greeted by the unnerving sight of a riderless police horse. Now horses aren’t something I’m too experienced with and I don’t know if this was a particularly big horse, but it looked pretty damn big to me.

Getting on wasn’t easy, either – it took three officers to get me up there. I have to admit, I’m not comfortable with the idea of being on a massive, unpredictable animal over which I have no control and each step my four-legged friend took filled me with terror. Despite assurances that this animal had been on the green tea and was particularly chilled, I was glad to be off at the end of the road, where the van was waiting to pick me up and take me home.

All in all a fantastic day that I won’t forget in a long while. It was the perfect way to get over hours and hours spent in the team bus the day before, having got all the way to Bristol to find out that our FA Cup third-round replay against Rovers had been called off. Oh well, at least we can say that we went to an away game and came back without having been beaten for once.