It revolved around a team of customs officers in the frontline of the battle against international smuggling and terrorism.

In essence it was just another re-run of the same old formula we’ve seen a dozen times before and since, from The Professionals to that recent hi-tech cop show starring the bloke who used to be Poirot.

The main difference was that instead of shouting “Go, Go, Go” when they piled out of the back of the van to give chummy a tug, they shouted “Knock, Knock, Knock”.

Clever, that.

Still, it was entertaining enough stuff and ran for three or four series on ITV until the storylines became too preposterous to sustain it.

From what I can remember, most weeks it featured our heroes confounding the usual assortment of Eastern European Mafiosi and African drugs mules from central casting.

The only episode which struck me as remotely authentic was one which centred on an operation against a gang of booze cruisers, led by the late Lenny McLean.

Otherwise, it was a glamorous and exciting depiction of life in HM Customs & Excise with plenty of fast cars, flash flats and legover.

There were reports at the time that the show had sparked a big increase in the number of people applying to become customs officers.

I wonder how many of them were successful. And whether they’re now working at the Channel ports.

If they were expecting to become secret agents with pocket calculators, they must be bitterly disappointed. They should have paid more attention to the Lenny McLean episode.

Because the reality of life for most officers in today’s Customs & Excise is not working undercover in an Albanian people-smuggling racket and pulling a bird who looks like a young Rula Lenska, but nicking an old lady in a wheelchair trying to bring a few cartons of Silk Cut back from a day trip to Calais.

The Knock did serve to remind us of the far-reaching, draconian powers of the customs service, dating back to the days of the 18th century rum smugglers.

As with all so-called public “servants” from the Town Hall Trots to the Traffic Taliban, if you give people power over their fellow citizens they will always, always, always abuse it.

And the Customs & Excise are rigid and ruthless in their interpretation and enforcement of the law.

That’s the main difference between the IRA and the VAT. You can negotiate with the IRA.

When the law doesn’t suit the Customs & Excise, they just make it up as they go along.

When the courts rule against them, they take no notice.

What is going on at the Channel ports, as highlighted in The Sun this week, is not only an affront to civil liberties, it is illegal.

When Europe became a single market, consumers were allowed to buy what they liked, where they liked, anywhere in the EU.

The courts have upheld the principle that there is no limit to what you can bring back to Britain for personal consumption.

There are supposed to be no tariff barriers between EU members. In shopping terms we are all treated as if we live in a single country.

Individual governments can still levy their own duties and VAT. What they can’t do is stop people buying abroad.

But that’s exactly what this Government is trying to do. So Customs & Excise invented an arbitrary set of “guidelines”, which have no force in law, placing artificial limits on what we can bring back.

When the courts decided that this was illegal, they simply ignored it.

Which is why 20,000 people have had their cars confiscated in the past two years, along with supplies of booze and tobacco they have bought quite legally in France.

We now live in a country where the full apparatus of the state is employed to treat decent, law-abiding taxpayers like criminals.

But at the same time, tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, smuggled here by real criminals, are waved through and pointed in the direction of the nearest DSS office.

Have a nice day.

Hitler would have been proud of the brave boys and girls at the Channel ports. But if they are behaving like the Gestapo, zey are only obeying orderz from their Obergruppenfuhrer, Gordon Brown.

Gordon may be an impressive New Labour chancellor, but his Old Labour instincts run deep.

He appears to believe that our money is his money and it’s simply a question of how much he generously allows us to keep.

Gordon hates the idea of us being free to spend our own money where we like, on what we like. And he loathes the thought of anyone slipping through his ever-expanding tax net, even if what they are doing is perfectly legal.

So he lets his stormtroopers break the law, bully and steal from law-abiding people who pay their wages.

It is a national disgrace and the blame lays at the door of Number 11 Downing Street.

Labour is always boring on about the “benefits” of being in Europe. One of the few benefits for most people is access to cheap booze and fags. That was how the Common Market was sold to us 30 years ago.

But the Government is determined we will not be allowed to enjoy even this small pleasure.

If they remade The Knock today they’d have to include old ladies being dragged off coaches and left stranded and hard-working people having their cars stolen by stone-faced fascists acting on the orders of Obergruppenfuhrer Brown.

If Gordon still entertains ambitions to be Prime Minister - which he does, not many - he should call off his Gestapo and end this wicked national scandal today.

If he doesn’t, he deserves never to be forgiven.

The game’s up, Gordon.

Knock, Knock, Knock.