A man bleeding from a huge wound in the chest approached a police officer in King’s Cross Road and said: “Could I speak to you for a minute?”

Clerkenwell Magistrates’ Court heard Jack Scott and Edward Noble, his 58-year-old alleged aggressor, were walking together. When Mr Scott approached the cop, Noble said: “I don’t want to talk to him. He is only an ordinary copper. Let’s go and see his guv’nor.”

Mr Scott then said: “We have had a bit of an argument and my chest is bleeding.”

The officer, Pc Lewis, told the court: “The injured man told me: ‘This must have happened when we were fighting.’”

Noble, of St James’s Walk, Clerkenwell, was remanded in custody.

Meanwhile, William Walton, headteacher of Archway County Secondary School for Boys, retired after five years at the school.

He planned to move to Devon. Pupils gifted him an electric drill and staff a pair of binoculars.