Peter Rhodes on the thickest of thieves

CAPTION David Mitchell in Upstart Crow

IF you're hungry, thirsty, cold and wet and living in terror of looters in some storm-ravaged outpost of Empire in the Caribbean, what is absolutely the last thing you need? Dead right - Boris Johnson. And although the British troops accompanying the Foreign Secretary smile dutifully for the cameras, if you speak privately to any soldier or officer, they'll tell you that nothing cocks-up a carefully-planned relief mission quite like a VIP visit. The Morse code message from the Caribbean was not so much SOS as BOB. I bet you can decode that.

WELCOME back, Upstart Crow (BBC2) starring David Mitchell as the young William Shakespeare in a period sitcom stuffed with great gags and sub-GCSE literary references. In contrast, Mitchell's wife, Victoria Coren Mitchell, presents the eye-wateringly difficult quiz show Only Connect, also on BBC2. I cannot think of another showbiz marriage where the husband's TV series makes you feel clever and the wife's makes you feel stupid. They must have an interesting relationship.

A FEW days ago it was reported that Barclays were issuing cheque books with a message urging customers to switch to hi-tech online banking: "It’s a high-tech world, so why use a low-tech cheque?" The very next day brought the headlines: "Up to 44 million Britons may have had their data stolen in massive cyber attack." See the connection? Some of us low-tech neanderthals would rather keep our sovereigns under the bed than create any electronic link between our hard-earned money and the global den of thieves that is the internet.

SHORTHAND experts are being invited to study notes made by the great polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton. Good luck with that. Shackleton's notes are 114 years old and, as any hack will confirm, shorthand starts to decay after a couple of days.

I LOVED Tim Vine's one-liner as he interviewed a retired farmer for his Chat Show (Radio 4) So the farm, was it arable or did you quite like it?

THE expression "as thick as thieves" describes the tendency of dishonest people to mix with their own sort. It's a confusing expression because so many thieves are, well, simply thick. Take the morons who stole a narrow boat from its mooring near Napton in rural Warwickshire. A 50ft steel boat with a diesel engine is hardly the ideal getaway vehicle. It goes pudda-pudda rather noisily, hits 4mph if you're lucky and there is no chance of turning around, branching off or flogging it to someone. Having nicked a narrowboat you are locked into the waterway network and there is no escape, especially when, as in this case, the owner sets up a Facebook alert. Sure enough, the vessel was found a couple of miles down the cut where police found "signs of cannabis use" and took fingerprints and DNA samples.

DNA is like diamonds. It's forever. The dope-smoking dopes know if they are ever arrested for anything at any time in the future and DNA tested, they will be charged with the boat theft. It's a sort of life sentence on the hopelessly thick, and serve 'em right.