Let's hear it for the maverick coroner

"I'm with the Coroner's office..." The Big Q always stood up for the little guy.

‘Gentlemen, you are about to enter the most fascinating sphere of police work: the world of forensic medicine.’

As hardened LA cops tumbled to the floor, we knew we were about to launch into another episode of the cult TV show Quincy ME, in which actor Jack Klugman played a coroner whose inquisitive nature and burning sense of injustice consistently got him into trouble with his boss.

One of the sure signs of middle age is finding that people immortalised in obituaries tend to be familiar figures from your childhood or teenage years. Learning about the 90-year-old Klugman’s death over Christmas made me feel genuinely sad. It also made me ponder a very important question: who the hell would perform the autopsy? Would it be Sam, Quince’s worthy, but rather plodtastic assistant? Or Aston, the smooth-talking bureaucrat whose career had taken him from the mortuary table to the boardroom table? Either way, the result would be unsatisfactory. Sam would follow the textbook, but miss something important. Aston would spot something important, but not want to rock the boat.

Quincy followed a weird plot structure, steeped in dramatic irony, in which the viewer knows whodunnit right from the get-go. In this format – perhaps most associated with Peter Falk’s Columbo – the opening scenes would show a villain going about his dastardly deed. So when Quincy rolled up in his Coroner’s Office station wagon and flashed his badge, we knew that he was talking to the murderer, even though the murderer would have some plausible alibi.

Again, following the pattern of Columbo, the perp would become more and more tetchy as the questioning went on. It wouldn’t be long before the intrepid LA Medical Examiner was accused of harassment and having no legitimate grounds for continuing his investigation. Maybe Aston was feeling the heat from someone at City Hall. Quincy would be well advised to let the case drop. Take a vacation, perhaps.

In later episodes, Klugman used the show as a vehicle to highlight pressing social issues in the United States. Everything from gun control to bizarre state regulations over the practice of midwifery. His character became a crusader who was later to star in a spin-off movie called Go Fight City Hall to the Death. Quince was the kind of guy you’d want on your side if you were in a tough spot. Exasperated by excuses and red tape, he wasn’t afraid to raise his voice on behalf of the little guy. Maybe just a slice of Klugman’s own early life – being chased by debt collectors and forced through poverty to sell his blood at five dollars a shot – came out in the impassioned performances.

I have an image of Quincy today – still dressed smartly by Botany 500 – questioning each new arrival at the biggest Coroner’s Office of all. Are they certain it was natural causes?

A Fawlty Towers script? Si, senor!

Ok, so I gave ChatGPT the following scenario: "Imagine a theatrical script for a situation comedy set in a hotel in Torquay, England. The proprietor is called Basil, an eccentric man who believes the calibre of guests to be low. His wife, Sybil, is often frustrated by Basil's incompetence. They employ a Spanish waiter called Manuel, who struggles to understand English. Basil suspects that two guests, who claim to be married, may be lying." Here's what our favourite AI came up with: Scene: The hotel lobby in Torquay, England. Basil is standing behind the reception desk, looking at a piece of paper. Sybil is standing next to him, looking annoyed. Manuel is hovering nearby, trying to look busy. Basil: (to Sybil) I don't know why we get such low-calibre guests at this hotel. Look at these two - Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They claim to be married, but I suspect they might be lying. Sybil: (sighing) Basil, it's not our job to judge the marital status of our guests. Just m

It's been a tough year. Let's give ourselves a clap.

If something didn’t smell right about the UK handling of the pandemic, the British public was never going to notice. But they knew that if they couldn’t smell something, they really ought to get a Covid test sent to them in the post. There has been something incredibly British about the DIY swabs and their delivery via the gig-economy workers of Amazon, hasn’t there? Touch of corona? I’ll pop something in the post to you. Should be with you tomorrow. I suppose it was inevitable that we’d need some new kind of system. After all, the coronavirus outbreak was the first thing in the history of the NHS that couldn’t be cured by paracetamol, rest and plenty of fluids. This understandably left GPs flummoxed and anxious. The UK decided pretty early on that if you were ill with a novel pathogen – which proved deadly in maybe 1% of cases – you really shouldn’t go to the doctor. You should STAY AT HOME and spread it quickly to your flatmates or family members. And because they were now at

The race for bogus Olympic stats

Of all the dubious statistics thrown around in relation to the London Olympics, the claim that there are '47 tube journeys in central London that can easily be walked' is surely one of the most misleading. I suspect it is based on the relative proximity of one station to an adjacent one. Embankment is walking distance from Temple. Charing Cross is a stone's throw from Leicester Square. But what exactly is a 'tube journey'? As I've understood it - and I'm only going on three decades' experience of using the network - it is a journey that takes you from any one place with a tube station to another. My journey from Leicester Square might take me to Charing Cross, but it might also lead me up the line to Camden Town or down south to Morden. In fact, from any one tube station - thanks to the wonders of interconnections - there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of options available to me. Now, I don't claim to have a PhD in mathematics, but the number of p

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