Patrick Christys: Let's get Liverpool taxi driver David Perry knighted

We have a new national hero, ladies and gentlemen. David Perry, remember the name.

He is a Liverpudlian taxi driver who, it appears, saved countless lives with his quick thinking.

It looks as though a, suspected, terrorist wearing a suicide vest got in David’s car and asked to be taken to the war memorial service.

Fortunately, the traffic was bad and the roads were closed so, in a scene straight out of the film Four Lions, the monster then asked to be taken to the city centre. There was apparently bad traffic again so he just asked to go to the women’s hospital…

Details of exactly what happened next are a little bit varied but from what is being reported in various newspapers, the lunatic in the back of the cab started fiddling with something and started 'vibrating' all over.

It was at this point apparently that hero David realised he was wearing a suicide vest and jumped out of the taxi and locked the man inside before the bomb was detonated.

Can you imagine if this guy had got out of the taxi and made it into the hospital foyer? It’s Europe’s largest maternity hospital and the scene would have been absolutely horrific.

There is a fundraising page for David Perry and his family to help them recover from this ordeal, but I don’t think that goes far enough. We need to knight this guy.

Get Perry knighted! It needs to be Sir David Perry! We’ve knighted Elton John for services to bang average music, Mick Jagger was knighted for prancing about and pouting a bit.

If reports are true and this taxi driver managed to lock a suspected terrorist in the back of his car before he could blow up a room full of women and new born babies then surely, surely he should be invited to get down on bended knee in front of the Queen and receive a knighthood.

When he woke up that morning and had a shower, a shave, did his usual routine, then he got in his car and just thought, I’ll have a normal day as a taxi driver…never in a million years would he have thought that he’d be called upon to potentially save dozens of lives.

David Perry is the very best of British. And on Remembrance Sunday as well – whenever this plucky little nation has been called upon in times of trouble, we’ve always answered that call. And that’s exactly what David did. He’s like a human microcosm of what makes this country great.

Quick thinking, ingenuity, epic bravery, self-sacrifice. Apparently he had to have part of his ear stitched back on and suffered cuts and bruises – although I imagine in the grand scheme of things he probably feels like he got off relatively lightly.

Unfortunately, there is a very limited amount that I can say about this particular incident because three people are now in custody, held under the Terrorism Act, and one would imagine there’ll be a court case at some point.

But, according to reports, One theory police are probing is that the detonators on a potential bomb exploded but not the main charge. That would be a repeat of the failed 21/7 bombings three weeks after the 7/7 atrocity in 2005.

As the police investigation developed three men aged 21, 26 and 29 were arrested as armed officers stormed a home in the inner-city Kensington area of Liverpool within 90 minutes of the explosion.

It is being treated as a terror investigation.

Those are the facts as we know it, but if it does turn out that the man in the back of a taxi was actually a terrorist who intended to blow up people at a war memorial, random passers-by in Liverpool city centre and then a maternity hospital, I think it’s fair to say that it’s just a shame we can’t revive him so that he can face justice.