Club News 2026
Annual General Meeting February 2026
The AGM was well attended and following an excellent lunch Trevor Jones was reinstated as Chairman.
Other members elected to the committee were :-
David Allen - Vice-Chairman and Treasurer.
Mike Applleyard - Secretary and Lunch Co-ordinator
Roger Gould - Membership Secretary
David Davis - Ladies Lunch Co - ordinator and
Bill Leftwich - Press Secretary.
Trevor outlined the successes of 2025 with excellent speakers and social events. He told the members to expect another excellent new year.
Picture - Trevor Jones accepting a second year of Chairmanship.
Smuggling 2026
Speaker Malcolm Nelson
The Club invited Malcolm Nelson to talk about his 40 years’ experience in catching airport smugglers. Malcolm’s ironic presentation title was “Why do I always feel so guilty?” as he explained that 80% of all drugs coming into the U.K. come via Heathrow airport because of the proximity to London and that 2/3rds of this are with small and medium-sized cartels with 20kilo bags being the optimum size bag for Class A drugs.
So how does the Heathrow team handle this problem? Well, from the moment an individual enters significant airports like Bangkok, Miami or elsewhere they are on teams radar. Information may have been sent, together with a photo from MI5 or the local foreign police, a photo will have been taken, the on-line digital team will have detected how long the person had stayed and whether they are returning from the same airport. Their luggage is checked to see if its weight has mysteriously grown by 20 or 30 kilos. Their behavior at the foreign check-in - nervous, over-confident play-acting - will have been observed and transmitted and, perhaps, together with their profile, if available from the database. On board any unusual behavior can also be observed, noted and transmitted.
By the time they arrive at Heathrow the local Heathrow drugs team - of more than 100 - will use all this information gathered and together with their experience determine if “SOMETHING IS NOT QUITE RIGHT” with the incoming bag or passenger body-language. Meanwhile, the sniffer dogs - trained in the different drugs and, also, money have also been in action on the incoming baggage and, amazingly, account for 45% of the drug detections.
Sometimes the suspects are not stopped but followed and passed to outside police to follow suspects back to their various operating cartels.
This highly informative and entertaining talk was filled with many amusing stories of successes and mistakes including the homecoming Bangladeshi man whose complete collection of furniture was completely cut up only to find that there were no drugs and he was genuine. Fortunately for him he was compensated with a new set!
A very appreciative audience was left with ideas on how not to feel or look guilty on their next holiday travels.