In the drunken fug that comes with post exam celebrations in university towns and cities, telling a policeman on horseback that his mount was gay probably seemed funny at the time. To Balliol college student, Sam Brown, he was, no doubt, just dabbling in a spot of light-hearted horseplay (sorry) after chancing across two officers patrolling Oxford's city centre in the early hours of one late May morning.
In the exchange that followed, Mr Brown, allegedly asked one of the police officers if he realised that his horse was gay. The subsequent police warning not to repeat the assertion, of course, acted like a red rag to a bull and before he could say "Red Rum" Mr Brown found himself staring at the inside of a police cell for the alleged breach of public order laws.
"It was a massive sense of humour failure on the part of the policemen. They radioed for backup and then proceeded to pursue him at a trot," an eyewitness said at the time.
Mr Brown refused to pay an £80 fine for disorderly behaviour, so Thames Valley police took him to court. A gross waste of police resources, protested the well-known gay rights activist Peter Tatchell.
"The police are not doing nearly enough to halt genuine violence against gay people and yet they waste their time on this absurd arrest," he told the Daily Telegraph last summer.
Today, however, the Crown Prosecution Service decided there was insufficient evidence to proceed and announced the case had been dropped.
While many may feel natural justice has been restored, the police today defended their decision to take the case to court.
"We present the case to the CPS and the CPS make the decision to proceed or not," a Thames Valley police spokesman said. "He made homophobic comments that were deemed offensive to people passing by."
Horse sense, indeed.
