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An inspector is doing his rounds on the Tube. With Holmesian ingenuity, he establishes that the man sitting next to me doesn’t have a ticket. The inspector asks man for his personal details. The man burbles something in a foreign language. The inspector repeats his demands more aggressively. The man shrugs his shoulders.

The inspector, who has obviously witnessed this strategy before, refuses to be defeated. Producing a pen, he scrawls the words Do you understand English? on his notepad and hands it to the man triumphantly. The man examines the notepad and takes the pen.

Yes thanks, he writes.