Like I said earlier, it's nothing to getting your library card renewed!!

There was a case I'm aware of earlier this year where someone brought a small penknife with them into the Pimlico passport office and, as one would expect, all hell broke loose.

First up were 2 semi-trained security officers who could not decide whether the basic metal spring on the blade constituted sufficient strength to make the penknife a 'locking blade' (illegal) or not. So it was necessary for the man and his knife to be held in a "secure non-threatening environment" until the police could attend from nearby Belgravia police station. They of course took one look and told the security staff to grow up, stop acting like twits and hand back the man's knife - which was the wrong stance to take with men who must have failed just about every exam for any uniformed service ever invented. They called up Home Office security which then dispatched its own officers to deal with the problem. The gentleman in question was removed to New Scotland Yard for further questioning, cautioned and released and presumably failed to get his passport.

I mention this because the man pointed out to the newspapers that he was fully aware of the security implications involved and so he had made sure he only brought a plastic 'penknife' with him, in order to clean his pipe out.

[Deleted. This is a comments space, not a convenience for sententious linking to irrelevant topics. - GH]

Why do I get the feeling that the 1977-78 TV series 1990 was just 20 years premature?

Would it be churlish to suggest those were probably the only W.A.S.P.s in that building at the time?

Zoe,

I was a fan of that series when it came out, but as far as I can see the BBC has never re-run it. BBC4 would seem to have a natural space for it.

Alas, it's not available on either DVD nor VHS either. One would almost think that it's "too hot to handle".

I have a strong aversion to conspiracy theories, but far too much of the show is no longer Science Fiction. Perhaps 20% in the UK. I don't see that percentage doing anything but increase, either. Slowly, imperceptibly, and most will remain fiction (or so I both hope and believe).

Nonetheless, it would be most educational for Generation Y to watch it.

I belong to a tiny minority group who it has been determined to be in a very special category. By the Australian Passports Determination 2005, it is "un-necessary or undesirable" to give people like me a passport. Now they can't legally refuse to give one - they just don't make a decision one way or the other, so there's no avenue of appeal. Far too close to "Authorised Systematic Harassment" for comfort.

There may be permissions questions causing problems. It was made under the old style BBC contracts with lots of provision for repeat fees for all and sundry. Edward Woodward was a bigger star then than he is now and may have control. In some cases (certainly on radio) the Beeb has done collective deals with writers and actors either to buy-out the rights or to pay a much lower residual for digital channels. (I predict this will cause trouble at analogue switch off.)

Wilfred Greatorex got a lot of flak at the time for putatively having written it as propaganda against the then Labour government, too. I suspect it is more likely it was marked "sensitive" by the BBC as a result of that, than any consideration about its content now. There are channel controllers too young ever to have seen it, and too busy wallowing in reality TV to review the archives.