AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

Countryfile BBC-1

A genuinely good idea this week, amidst the folderol and the 'best bits of the past' which seem to have become a permanent feature.

Adam's interviewing this young kid who grew up on the family farm devoted to growing soft fruit in giant glasshouses under contract to the supermarkets. He loved it, he had his own toy tractor and everything. His parents didn't love it. Growing soft fruit for hardnosed supermarkets is a mug's game.

Junior goes off to agricultural college, does his obligatory year in New Zealand and is all set to follow ma and da in the family business. 'Look, we all know growing soft fruit for hardnosed etc etc, why not give me a go?' But remember, he's a bit soft when it comes to soft fruit.

So they stop supplying the supermarkets, get rid of the hundred or so foreign pickers, demolish ninety per cent of the glass houses and concentrate 100% on the absolutely best soft fruit personal cossetting can buy. Nothing much to report so far. He'll be going organic next.

But here's the USP. He spends a hundred thousand on setting up a self-service farm shop featuring banks of soft fruit pannets, each behind a glass window. You pay your money, enter the number of the one you fancy, take it home, tell all your friends you've never had such nice strawberries.

Soon people are coming from forty miles away. Why? Because otherwise every strawberry you eat is a supermarket strawberry and they are not chosen for their taste.

[Mick Harper]

Trace, Track, Get My Car Back (BBC-1)

Your firm fits trackers to high end bikes and when they get stolen it's your job to track them down in order to return them to their grateful owners. You've had a call-out, you know the bike is somewhere on a South London estate.

After hours of messing about with your radio dubry, you have to call in someone with a drone. Apparently aerial snooping is legal in South London. Thank God, because there it is! On a balcony three floors up. And, just as a bonus, the thief is brazenly making adjustments to it. It won't be the same saddle height, will it?

Knock, knock.
Yes?
You've got my bike.
No, I haven't.
I've just seen you with it on your balcony.
Oh, that bike. Somebody left it to have it repaired.
Can you get it?
Yes.

And that was it. The bike was returned to its grateful owner. No police, no nothing. But you have to see things from the company's point of view. Reporting it to the police might have meant the bike being retained indefinitely as evidence. Besides bike-stealing is good for business, it shouldn't be discouraged.

[Mick Harper]

Fare Dodgers: At War With The Law (Channel 5)

The award for Fatuous Triumphalism of the Year went to Transport for London's Revenue Protection Service. They've got this superduper computer programme that flags potential fare-dodgers from data its electronic ticket barriers record. There's not many under-16's commuting on the Elizabeth Line, coming into town late mornings and going home well into the evening.

Cue camera footage of the Under-16 (according to his half-fare season ticket) who's doing it. Sure enough he looked more late-thirties to the Revenue Protection lads and lassies. After an extensive stake-out, they pounced and he went quietly. He agreed he owed three and half grand to TfL for, according to the computer, more than five hundred illicit journeys.

Revenue Protection were high-fiving it like crazy. 'He won't be doing that again in a hurry.' I wasn't so sure. The upshot was the geezer was fined £40 with costs of £175 and compensation of £175. I couldn't help thinking it might have been better if the season ticket had been nixed after, maybe, twenty red flags and questions asked at that stage.

[Mick Harper]

The best part of the programme though is the exchange that happens virtually every time some one-off nogoodnik gets nabbed at the barriers.

This isn't a valid ticket.
Oh, isn't it? I thought it was.
You'll have to pay a penalty fare of £120.
I haven't got that sort of money on me.
Don't worry, all I need is your name and address and you've got twenty-one days to pay.
John Smith, 123 Acacia Avenue.
I'll need to see some sort of ID to confirm that.
I'm afraid I don't have that on me either.

They always say this and they always manage to find it after being told it will be a civil matter between them and the train company if they do. Or the police will be called and it'll be a criminal prosecution for fare evasion.

The entertainment lies in the fact that every single one of them believes they've come up with a dodge nobody else has thought of. Yes, I know, I'm easily amused but you have to remember I've been on both sides in my time. I get all nostalgic as well.

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

Trace, Track, Get My Car Back (Cont)

Car thieves are getting fly about trackers. They can disable one sort, the ones that need access to a satellite to operate, by ripping them out. But the other type sends signals to the local mobile phone masts and not only can these not be located on the vehicle, you can't tell whether one has been fitted in the first place.

So the bad guys park the car up somewhere quiet but public and see if some nosey parker comes sniffing around. If he does, they cut their losses. If he doesn't, it's off to Felixstowe and a container slow boat to China.

Car owners are getting fly about this kind of electronic-savvy tea leaf. They post up a photo of their beloved on the internet and wait for an email. Sure enough, 'It's right here in Acacia Avenue.'

But beware! One mobile home owner had her pride and joy lifted from her front yard but it got returned thanks to its tracker. A few days later the hoods were back casing the joint now they knew what kind of tracker it had! She was so shaken by this she ended up selling her house as well as the mobile home.

Memo to plant hire thieves. If you've ransacked a building site, hotfooted away with three expensive products from JCB and you've stashed them on a secluded industrial estate, for goodness sake when you see the tracker-operatives giving one of them the once over, don't drive past them with the other two on a lowloader. The police will be flagging you down within a very few miles.

'All units, be on the lookout for a lowloader with two bright yellow muckshifters aboard travelling east on the A37 towards Felixstowe. Driver to be detained for questioning.'

[Mick Harper]

Can someone explain to me why every news organisation in the land has to down-tools and rush off to a godforsaken field in some extremity of the British Isles in order to join some twats in a field watching a partial eclipse of the sun? And forcing us to spend twenty minutes being armchair twats?

Am I missing something? Does it portend the death of a king? Being partial, I expect he's just got a nasty cough.

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

Talking of trackers why don't they fit them to vaping devices? I'm constantly losing mine and having to buy another one. On second thoughts, don't bother. I know roughly where it is, I just can't be bothered to start shifting furniture around to retrieve it.

[Wile E. Coyote]

You could always velcro your vape to your settee. Just dont confuse it with the TV remote.

[Mick Harper]

How do I position my mouth alongside the settee in order to vape and watch TV at the same time? I've just said I don't want to start shifting furniture around. I wish you'd think these things through, Wiley, rather than constantly shooting from the hip.

[Mick Harper]

Never let it be thought car thieves are not doing their bit in the fight against global warming. They almost never steal e-cars because there's no market for them in the places they send their ill-gotten cars to by the containerload.

Speaking of which, why don't containers have little glass panels (or whatever) so their contents can be readily inspected? They've got nothing to hide. Or if they might have, it's the devil's own job to smash the lock with a heavy maul, so only a tiny fraction of containers ever do get inspected. That would, by my reckoning, reduce car theft by an order of magnitude.

So it'll never happen.

[Mick Harper]

I have just watched a sumptuous (too sumptuous for me) part-history, part travelogue account of a mountain freight line in Oregon. The biggest surprise came in the end credits