Obiter enjoys a little wordplay. We’re not above throwing in a pun or two to jazz up an article or headline, no matter how many groans they elicit from the newsdesk.

But we draw the line at the increasing trend of police forces attempting their own gags when sending out press releases on matters that hardly call for humour.

Caught bang to rights this week was Cheshire Police’s report on the sentencing of a solicitor who had impersonated an officer to try to get hold of CCTV footage of an arguing couple from a Nando’s restaurant in Warrington.

The involvement (albeit indirectly) of the Peri Peri sauce merchants gave everyone a chance to put Nando’s in an SEO-friendly headline and use a stock image of the restaurant.

The police press officer enjoyed the tale too, opening their headline with ‘Come home to roost’. Even worse, the detective constable quoted joshed that the solicitor ‘clearly counted his own chickens before they hatched’ – which actually makes no sense anyway.

Are we being too po-faced about this? Perhaps. But we would rather Plod reserved its ingenuity for catching crooks, leaving the literary flights of fancy (chicken-related or otherwise) to the professionals.