Police Commissioner John Rizzo has spoken candidly about a near-death experience and five months he spent in hospital earlier this year, and says the experience has injected in him fresh enthusiasm for his job.

In a wide-ranging interview with Ariadne Massa, he describes how he had planned to take two weeks off in June to eliminate ulcerative colitis - an inflammatory bowel disease - but was unable to return to work until November 1.

In other comments, he reveals that after he introduced regular physical training for the police, he discovered that sick leave went up - some 100 policemen out of 1,500 undergoing the training did not show up. He took action, and those unable to do physical exercises have been transferred to HQ for alternative duties.

On the judicial protest by hundreds of policemen demanding payment for overtime, Mr Rizzo said this could be an issue of interpretation of a 1993 agreement.

Mr Rizzo maintains that the agreement was always understood to refer to the normal shift of police who worked a normal five-day week and not for those who worked 24 hours on and 24 off, or those on a shift of day, night and rest.

He points out there were those who worked 96 hours, but this did not mean they were actively working, since they had passive time to sleep or do other work, not related to the force; they were on stand-by.

The full interview can be seen in The Sunday Times.