via the Financial Times...
They eavesdrop on your conversations, rifle through dustbins and pretend to deliver pizzas while taking covert photographs with a disguised camera. They hide, watch and wait, and hang around for hours in the freezing cold, crouched down in the back of a parked car dying to use the bathroom.
This is the real life of Britain’s private investigators. There are between 4,000 and 5,000 of them now active. The stereotype is of the disgraced police officer, thrown off the force, all grubby raincoat and cigarette dangling from his lower lip; or the lithe, brooding, silent panther, with eyes in the back of his head, capturing the bad guys. Neither is quite right, nor quite wrong. (more) (Duckman - American private investigator stereotype)
