’arry Roberts is our friend, is our friend, is our friend … there are times when you understand why some people, even now, dislike football and, in particular, football 'supporters’.

The tribal pride I have shared since the 1960s, of being 'Shelf Side Tottenham’ (as opposed to Park Lane Tottenham, the cheerleading end behind the goal, or the Paxton, the other end who often need a gee-up from the rest of us to get in on the singing), does occasionally turn to embarrassment at the extremer forms of abuse, to which I usually feel unable to contribute.

Hearing the Harry Roberts song, to the tune of London Bridge Is Falling Down, was perhaps the first time I became aware that the High Road was further than I thought from High Wycombe where, as far as I knew, everybody liked the Old Bill well enough.

It was probably only a small group of yobs taunting the mounted policemen, and I may have only heard it once or twice, but I have never forgotten the shocking, brutal chill of it: “… ’Arry Roberts is our friend, he kills coppers.”

And it all came back with the pictures in the papers of the man who shot dead two of the three policemen murdered near Shepherds Bush in 1966 and who, at the age of 72, is seeking release from prison.

The grainy, black and white image, with the swept back, wavy hair, and the hollow, sunken eyes, is eerily reminiscent of the mugshot of Moors murderer Ian Brady, jailed for the murder of three children in the same year.

Roberts’ notoriety must have lasted, because I did not make my first pilgrimage to Tottenham until three years later, and if anything in 1966 had cut away at my childhood innocence it would have been the Aberfan school disaster, when more than 100 children of about my age died beneath an avalanche of coal-slag, from an unstable tip.

So I can’t claim that the cop-killer represented an awakening at the age of 10, because I’m not sure I was really aware of it at the time, and I knew that some people shot policemen because I had seen The Blue Lamp, but it was the celebration of it, compared with the condemnation of George Dixon’s murderer in the film, which sickened me at 13.

Forty-two years is probably plenty of punishment for anyone, he’s nearly as old as my father, and is hardly likely to be a threat to society, so I don’t suppose I will be particularly bothered if he is released.

But I can’t say I’ll be particularly bothered if he stays locked up, either.