SAID in court to have obtained a fake taxi driver's licence in order to impress the girl he wanted to marry, 23-year-old Nasar Pervez, of Accrington, nevertheless put it to other uses -- using it to collect fares in his father's car despite never even having passed a driving test.

It is one thing that many cab passengers in East Lancashire might find the unlicensed Mr Pervez's lack of experience behind the wheel difficult to distinguish from that of the taxi drivers who routinely provide so many of us with a white-knuckle ride when we responsibly leave our own cars at home.

But, surely, it is quite another when it is suggested that bogus taxi drivers like him may be all around.

For, as Blackburn magistrates heard from Mr Pervez's lawyer, the doctored taxi licence that he was using was obtained from a friend who was running "something of a cottage industry" with regard to taxi licences.

Oh, really? A cottage industry?

And what's being done about this fiddle? How many more unlicensed -- and, so, uninsured -- taxi drivers are at the wheel in East Lancashire?

Will the police or local authority taxi licence issuers please investigate -- or is it that public safety has to take a back seat in the cowboy culture of the cab trade?