6 November 2009 ~ You may have heard that some widely circulated pictures of suspects involved in the West Ham-Millwall riot included several actors from the film The Firm. Police subsequently withdrew six mugshots whose publication might have led to legal action. "The detectives weren't able to differentiate the film clip from the real thing," said a police source. One way to distinguish between a genuine hooligan and Simon from stage school playing a geezah is to apply the reliable "fatface or ratface" test. As newspaper reports will show, almost everyone arrested for fighting at football matches is either pale and chubby or lean and rodent-like. If a photo of a suspect doesn't fit into either category then it must be a freezeframe from a Nick Love flick. You'd think that hoolieporn auteurs would have caught on to this by now and employed people who look the part, but you can always tell – the ratty ones are never quite nasty enough, the chubby types just a bit too toned.

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