'More screams than Justin Timberlake' - Blackpool's 'Female Police Officer' speaks about viral TikTok fame

The officer, whose real is Jo, appeared on a TikTok “auditor”video in 2023, where she was mislabelled as man.

Famously, in response, she says: “He? I’m a female police officer and I find that offensive.”

The video has been viewed more than 300m times worldwide, and the famous line has made its way into popular culture. The officer - who is still working for Lancashire Police - has been praised for ‘leaning into’ the fame and having a good sense of humour.

Infact she even reinacted the video in a skit with the SpudBros at Lytham Festival last year - a video that recieved 1 million likes.

This week, she was the star guest on the Pocket Sergeant Podcast on TikTok, speaking about the night it happened, and what life has been like since.

She said: “Society trolls...they’re very quick to scrutinise and stereotype, but I’d like to see them pull on a police uniform and deal with what we have to deal with day in and day out. But it’s their right to do that, just broad shoulders, ignore it.

“But I kind of embraced it after a while. It did take a while, don’t get me wrong. But I embraced it...so I’m in a bar on a leaving do and I’m talking to colleagues and I get a tap on the shoulder. ‘Excuse me, can I just ask, is it you?’”

She said she is regularly asked for selfies in this way, and even recruits on a police course she runs have asked for photos with her. While working at football matches in Lancashire, she’s been on the receiving end of good-humoured chants, such as ‘There’s only one female police officer’, and has even been recognised in the pool on holiday in Morrocco.

She said the strangest place she’s been asked for a selfie is in the ladies toilet of a pub and even claims she’s had ‘more screams than Justin Timberlake on a Saturday night’ at Lytham Festival - but only from the younger generation, leaving those 50-plus baffled as to who she is.

The officer, who is originally from Chesterfield in Derbyshire, was intitally considered too small to be in the police and worked on milk rounds and in cafes before moving to Lancashire when she bought a hotel in 1998. She then had her own cafe, before the seasonal nature of the work took its toll and she enrolled as a police special. After two years, there was a recruitment drive for regular officers, and she was taken on, initially in the Wyre area, where she became known to colleagues as ‘PC Postcode’, as she used a satnav to get to jobs.

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