Peter Withe is no longer manager of Thailand's national football team, as we stated in the article below. He left Thailand in 2002 and managed Indonesia's national side until January this year.

As the seafront beat officer in the kiss-me-quick resort of Great Yarmouth, Gary Pettengell built up quite a local following, sorting out lost kids, checking teenage high spirits and pointing holidaymakers in the direction of ice cream, cash machines or loos.

But it isn't until you see him out and about in the small Baltic nation of Lithuania that you understand where his fame really lies. The modest, happily married PC from Norfolk constabulary has been voted the country's personality of the year.

"I know you, don't I?" says the woman in the next seat to him on the flight to Vilnius, the country's capital. Camera crews are waiting at the airport and a couple of small boys in the street want his signature - and helmet if possible.

All this before a ceremony to honour him in the presence of the great and the good at St Catherine's church in Vilnius, a baroque masterpiece.

Like other unexpected Britons, from Norman Wisdom in Albania to Mr Bean in Iran, PC Pettengell has become an icon overseas for work which has been honoured only locally in Britain.

The man who put him on a path to a ceremony with Valdas Adamkus, the president of Lithuania, EU commissioners and a foot-stomping crowd in Vilnius last week, was a Norfolk inspector, and a gentle piece of career advice. "I was thinking about my next step in the police a year or two back," says PC Pettengell, "and my chief in Yarmouth called me in and said 'How you do fancy being a ward beat manager (WBM)?' We all use long words now, but that really meant being the seafront bobby on the beat."

It was a post to die for locally ("Except between December and March," he points out) but the new WBM soon found an unexpected side to the fresh air and fun. The resort's long-established communities of Greek Cypriots and Portuguese had been newly joined by a puzzled, disorientated and often desperate group of new arrivals - Lithuanians on dodgy contracts which left them ignorant of British rules on employment and health and safety as well as frequently skint.

"I remember going into a room to meet a group and at the sight of the uniform they shrank away and clammed up," he says. "I thought: no, that isn't how we do policing here."

Within the week, he was on the internet, checking out Teach Yourself Lithuanian courses. By the end of the month, he took delivery of a set of CDs.

What he found as he went more deeply into the world of immigrant labour, newly possible for the Lithuanians through EU entry, shook him. He recalls: "They didn't speak English, they worked together in factories, they lived in rooms together, they had to pay for minibuses to work, they were going to be the first to go if the economy had a downturn.

"A lot of them had been promised a pot of gold but I came across people who literally hadn't eaten for a week. And that way, we got people coming into the criminal justice system - like for stealing a loaf of bread - who simply shouldn't have been there."

PC Pettengell's answer, after mastering enough Lithuanian to break the ice, was to start a programme of basic help, on a one-to-one level and by setting up a "Welcome to Norfolk" website. He obtained the funds himself from the Criminal Justice Board and started posting up the info which he knew was most needed.

"I'd found myself answering the same questions again and again, simple things like: how do you open a bank account? Easy? Not when you share a room and can't produce a utility bill. And then there was how do you get a national insurance card? Or first, what is a national insurance card?"

The work didn't go unnoticed. Last year PC Pettengell, 42, whose wife, Sarah, is also a Norfolk PC, was nominated for Norfolk's community officer of the year award, and he won.

That didn't go unnoticed either. Local Lithuanians spread the word back home, and he faced the biggest test of his Lithuanian to date - when Vilnius newspapers and the country's Channel 3 TV flew over to interview him.

"It turned out I'd been put up for this award," he says. "They came and filmed me and some of the people here, and then they showed it over there, with similar films about the other candidates, and, well, I won." The field for the Pride of Lithuania ceremony's various categories included a scientist saving orangutans in Sumatra, lifesavers, a priest rehabilitating drug abusers and families who had coped with disasters.

Tens of thousands of Lithuanians voted and the British bobby was their man. Norfolk police were understandably chuffed. Chief Superintendent Charlie Hall said: "We are really pleased, especially as we didn't put him up for it. It was the Lithuanian people who picked up on the work he has done with the community in Yarmouth. That work has had great benefits from a policing perspective in understanding the community's issues and needs."

Back home, after an official guided tour of Lithuania with Sarah, plus front page pictures in the mass circulation Lituvos Rytas newspaper, PC Pettengell now wants to lose the limelight and focus on his new job, dealing with domestic violence and hate crimes. He learned a lot about the effects of scaremongering and racism during his Lithuanian project.

He also has a small admin job. "Excuse me," he says, "but I've got to get a report in about what happened to my helmet." There was a boy at the awards who had overcome dire domestic and other problems, and he really wanted Gary's headgear. He got it.

Baltic Bobby

Hello, hello, hello

Labas, labas, labas

Move along there, please

Vijeok deasi prasau

Let's be having you

Kliosek minas

Evening all

Labanakt





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