'Underground Medecin' debuted live in November 1978, and was recorded for Live at the Witch Trials in December. The album was released the following March.
In June 1978, the case of one Dr Clive Arkle was widely reported. A surgeon Lieutenant with the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (not a colonel), he had been a competition-winning marksman in the 1950s and 1960s (I confirmed this from contemporary newspaper reports).
The police had refused to renew his firearms license on the grounds that he was always drunk. Arkle appealed the decision but was unsuccessful in having the license restored.
A few months later, it was reported that he had been banned from driving for three years for drink-driving.
I also found out that in 1991 he sadly but perhaps unsurprisingly died of a stroke, aged just 68.
Anyway, among the coverage I found was this article. Note the headline:
Source: Daily Mail, 27 June 1978, p.3.
MES may have changed "doctor" to "colonel" (or perhaps misremembered it, but "colonel" is a better fit), but this is so nearly-but-not-quite the lyric that I would put money (not much, mind you) on it being his source.