Now that Great Scotland Yard is to be converted into a luxury hotel and the few remaining policemanists are either investigating Sir Richard’s trip to Sheffield almost 30 years ago or standing round the Israeli embassy dressed up like ninja skateboard enthusiasts, I’m surprised more school leavers aren’t considering a career in crime.
There are a few issues, of course. For example, there’s no point robbing a bank, because all the money held inside doesn’t exist in big piles of crisp tenners that can be carried outside to your waiting Ford Transit van. It’s all theoretical.
And if it were easy to steal by using a laptop from the privacy of your own bedsit, then people would be doing just that. And they aren’t. Instead it seems the world’s brightest and most brilliant computer hackers are only able to steal photographs of Jennifer Lawrence’s breasts, which net them the grand total of no money at all.
Perhaps this is why French thieves have been reduced to gassing British caravannists and, as they sleep in a fug of carbon monoxide, breaking in to steal their . . . what, exactly? Their Tupperware? Their Swingball set? Their stash of H&E Naturist magazines? Certainly it’s my bet that no caravan contains a safe full of exotic jewels and cash.
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This is the problem. You don’t even find cash in most parking meters these days. Which may sound disheartening for anyone who’s decided they don’t want to be an estate agent or a florist. But happily there is a solution: food fraud.
As we know, the Chinese are extremely adept at making copies of well-known western brands. You can buy fake Chanel handbags, Hermès scarves and Rolex watches. On a recent trip to Burma I found a fake Sony Walkman that was perfect in every way, apart from the fact that Sony was spelt “Sonk”.
Closer to home, we are regularly asked to buy pirated films and television box sets. The art world is forever being duped by immaculate forgeries and there’s a man who comes to my door a lot with a van full of Bukhara rugs that I just know were knocked up in Ealing, west London. So if you can fake a rug, why can’t you fake food and wine?
Apparently this has been tried in China but it didn’t go well. The fraudsters decided to beef up baby milk with the industrial chemical melamine and six infants died as a result. There was a similar problem in the Czech Republic after a batch of fake vodka and rum, which had been laced with methanol, wound up on the streets. More than 40 people died after drinking it.
Don’t be disheartened, though, because I’m absolutely sure it is possible to sell fake food that doesn’t contain ricin or anthrax or anything that is even remotely fatal.
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Take chicken. It requires effort to rear the birds these days. To keep the animal rights people at bay, they have to be housed in four-poster beds and given access to hot-and-cold running satellite television. When their time comes, they must be killed kindly using nothing but lullabies and summer breezes. And the resultant meat must be transported in ebola-style sterile tents to the supermarket, within hours.
But I’ll let you into a little secret. Pretty much everything tastes like chicken, so why not set up an operation selling chicken that is actually rat, or crocodile?
Many restaurants already employ this technique. It was discovered back in April that more than half the lamb curries tested in Birmingham contained other, cheaper meats such as beef or turkey. And could the customers tell? Not when the dish was smothered in 1,400 gallons of vindaloo, they couldn’t.
Of course you might imagine that if you went round selling chicken that was actually hamster you would be arrested very quickly. But in the whole of Buckinghamshire, where there are about 2,500 farms, and many more businesses associated with selling and retailing food, there are only 20 trading standards officers. In Worcestershire the figures suggest there are only six. The result is simple: you’re not going to get caught.
And even if you do, the court is not going to treat you like a drug dealer or a people trafficker.
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Which brings me on to an even better idea. Faking household names. Simply make some cola cans, put a silly name on the side such as Greg or Dude, fill them with water and pass them off as Coke. By the time anyone finds out what you’ve done, you’re long gone.
Or better still, go upmarket and target the food snobs. I’m amazed that the world isn’t full of fake Fortnum & Mason hampers containing Spam dressed up as pâté, and rubbish wine being passed off as Château Mouton Rothschild. Because who would ever know?
Not me, for sure. During a press junket many years ago BMW played a practical joke on journalists. We were taken to a chateau in France and invited to try the wine . . . which had been laced with vinegar. Like many colleagues, I made lots of heartfelt “ooh” and “mmm” noises before buying a case. So could I tell the difference between a bottle of newsagent plonk and a 1945 Pétrus? Nope. And the chances are you couldn’t either.
It’s easy to tell a fake Rolex from the real thing. Just wait a couple of minutes and the second hand will fall off. Or take it in the rain and watch it dissolve. But with food and drink it isn’t easy at all. Could you, for instance, tell the difference, in a blind tasting, between expensive acorn-fed ham and ham from a pig that’s eaten nothing but used tea bags and cigarette butts?
Could you tell Norwegian jarlsberg from cheddar, or caviar from lumpfish roe? Could you tell the difference between a truffle and your next-door neighbour’s verruca?
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The world of food snobbery is ripe for fraudulent exploitation and the government plainly has recognised this because, as we speak, ministers are studying proposals for a sort of national FBI-style food-crime unit.
I shouldn’t worry, though, because it won’t happen, and even if it does, the people it employs won’t be able to tell the difference between caviar and lumpfish roe either.