Why silence is golden

If there is a lesson to be learned from the case of conman auctioneer Justin Bettsworth, it is that if a bargain seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Bettsworth and his accomplices played on people’s enthusiasm for good deal and now he is paying the price - a six month jail sentence.

They illegally entered shops and set up auctions - in this case at the vacant Pay & Go store in Wolverhampton’s Queen Street. People paid £5 to take part in the auction and then forked out up to £250 for bogus goods they later found didn’t work.

Bettsworth would have got away with it but for one man who was so distressed at having been conned he went to the trading standards office.

Hundreds more people will have taken their goods home from Bettsworth’s auctions and discovered they had been played for fools, but were so embarrassed that they did nothing about it. And that embarassment is what Bettsworth and his ilk rely on; no-one wants to be seen as stupid, no matter how much money they lose.

The fact that the laptop computers, Sony PlayStations, cameras and watches they had paid hundreds of pounds for turned out to be cheap alternatives, worth a fraction of what they had cost, was secondary to the price people believed they would have paid in public shame. The cost of saving a red face may have been expensive, but Justin Bettsworth was prepared to bet heavily that it was a price most people would pay.

In addition to his jail term Bettsworth, from Manchester, and his accomplice and auctioneer Elie Khoury are now banned from entering the West Midlands. But there are scores more conmen and women out there, preying on the gullible. It takes people with the courage to swallow their pride to catch them. Too often, the crooks get away with it.

Only two winners in the jungle game

It’s that time of the year again - the Z-list celebrities are crawling out of the woodwork to take part in another series of “I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here”. We can try to resist, but the awful fascination of this bizarre TV series is almost bound to hook us and reel us in.

Every year we take a look at another list of people we have never heard of or can barely remember and decide, this time, we’ll give it a miss. And every year I’m A Celebrity tops the viewing figures.

And with the likes of Cherie Blair’s outspoken half sister Lauren Booth and Liza Minnelli’s decidedly odd-looking ex-husband David Gest preparing for life in the Australian jungle, ITV is already cranking up the cringe factor.

The show might provide a boost for the likes of Jason Donovan - the onetime Neighbour’s hearthrob turned West End musical star quoted as 2-1 favourite to win by Ladbrokes - but the real winners will be Ant and Dec, again.