Firefighters bear brunt of 'Trumpton' jokes among other emergency services Trumpton's characters (Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grub) are often used to mock firefighters, who police and ambulance crews believe get disproportionate respect. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive Police and ambulance crews tell jokes about firefighters as a way of coping with the death and destruction they deal with on a daily basis, according to new academic research. Both services regularly refer to them as "water fairies" and "drip stands," as well the more well-known "Trumpton," but also often joke that they sleep on the job, cut car roofs off unnecessarily and hose away vital evidence. But they also often feel that the public image of firefighters, particularly among women, is undeserved, pointing out that they don't actually run into burning buildings very often. "You could say we're not ramming it down people's throats that we rescued a cat out of a tree," said one police officer. The research, by Dr Sarah Charman of Portsmouth University's institute of criminal justice studies and published in the International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, says such black humour helps "glue" ambulance crews and police officers together. "Emergency workers frequently find themselves in unpleasant and unpredictable situations at odds with the heroic status and image presented in television dramas," she said. They regularly deal with death or near-death. They face messy and mortifying situations the rest of us never have to encounter. Charman added that they managed such stressful situations with humour that allowed them to control their feelings of fear or vulnerability. For these people, it is often a case of if you didn't laugh, you'd cry. Both have a tension-reducing effect, but it's not socially acceptable for professionals doing their job to cry. But she said the unexpected finding of her research, based on interviews with 45 ambulance staff and police officers, was that while all three emergency services enjoy a mutual respect and camaraderie, firefighters were often not included and were likely to be the main target of their light-hearted banter. Regular fire officers were repeatedly described as "daffodils" who "wear yellow hats and stand around in bunches," because of their rigid command structure where orders are rigidly followed with no room for individual discretion. They were also called "sheep with their sheepdog" for the same reason. Many of those interviewed mentioned the ability of firefighters to sleep while they are on duty, which isn't possible in the laybys and supermarket car parks that ambulance staff often have to park in while they are on standby. As one ambulance driver put it: "I was on standby once and we used to share a fire station ... and we had the TV on and [laughs] a crew commander came out and knocked into us and said, 'We're all trying to sleep down the corridor'." Both police and ambulance staff frequently mentioned the amount of time during their working shifts firefighters spend playing volleyball, badminton or at the gym. The other emergency workers also widely believe that when firefighters do actually attend an incident they "stamp their big size nines all over everything," "cut stuff up then spray water over it" and then "sweep up all the evidence." Fire officers are also regarded as being particularly enthusiastic about cutting car roofs off, cutting battery wires and using crowbars to get car bonnets open unnecessarily. "Four police officers independently, and with great humour, relayed the tale of a major road blocked for a considerable amount of time by a fire truck parked on the wrong side of the carriageway," reported Charman. She says that such a "mutually defined 'joke book'" acts as a glue between police and ambulance staff in a way that might seem trivial but it helps build a strong reliance on each other's skills and qualities in difficult situations and fostered a strong degree of trust. They are well aware though that such shared gallows humour might be seen as slightly sick or warped with an unspoken rule that they didn't make such jokes in front of family, friends or the public. The one thing the research doesn't reveal is what the firefighters say about the police and ambulance crews. That will take another research project.