AN ANIMAL rights activist has spoken out about his shock at recently discovering his best mate in the 1980s was actually a police spy. 

The officer, known only by his cover name John Lipscomb, infiltrated several south London-based animal rights groups during the 1980s and ’90s, including Bromley Animal Rights, where he met Daryl Dixon, then aged 23, in 1987. 

Mr Dixon, a lifelong animal rights activist from Kent, quickly formed a close friendship with Lipscomb, bonding over a shared passion for the cause.