The Our spotlight show this week takes us back to London for more mysteries of Scotland

Yard. In past episodes we've heard Orson Wells narrate the histories of objects found in the yard's Black Museum.

We've met Inspector Peter Black in Pursuit.

And less flatteringly, we saw Scotland Yard as they operated several steps behind Sherlock Holmes.

Add to that list of shows Whitehall 1212, a series featuring an all British cast presenting true crime stories.

The title of the program came from the phone number for London's metropolitan police.

And each episode dramatized a true crime from the files of Scotland Yard in scripts written

and directed by one of Radio's Greatest Talents.

In 1951, producers Jack Goldstein and Kali Small

purchased the rights to Scotland Yard's case files. They retained Percy Hoskins,

the chief crime reporter of the London Daily Express,

to serve as the researcher for their new series, White Hall 1212.

At the time, Hoskins had already spent 25 years covering crime in London and he'd

published a comprehensive history of Scotland Yard that same year. He was well

known and well respected among policemen, and his position gave him insight into the highest levels of power.

The saying went that if you were in trouble with the law, you called Percy Hoskins before you called your own lawyer.

Hoskins passed on one key piece of advice to young reporters.

When you were interviewing somebody,

always have this question in the back of your mind.

Why is this bugger lying to me?

To pen the stories that Hoskins researched,

the producers tapped Willis Cooper.

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