Technically Innocent

No patriot will fail to swell with pride at the unadulterated Britishness which has followed from a couple of tourists denouncing a teenage Sudanese stowaway. Despite doing the legal, moral, compassionate, pragmatic, British thing after discovering the invader in the bike rack on the back of their motor-home, the pair have incurred a £1500 fine from the Ministry of Wog Control for failing to check that no clandestine entrant was concealed in the vehicle: a failure which they apparently had in common with the official defenders of our glorious national borders. Tale-tattling is all very well, but only after you have done the prefects' job for them. However, it's in the couple's grounds for appeal against the fine that the business attains its crowning Britishness: they contend that, far from being concealed in the motor-home, technically the boy was clinging to the outside.