I am currently in Australia with other former Doctors Who celebrating the programme’s 50th anniversary with the time lord’s many fans down under.

One of our party believed that he had been deprived of his wallet and phone by a pickpocket while shopping in Sydney and it was only after he had cancelled all his credit cards, of course, that the shop in which he had left those items managed to contact him.

This triggered reminiscences within our group of other incidents, both actual and imagined, of the felonious appropriation of wallets and handbags.

We recalled the story of the actor, well known to all of us who, whilst performing in a play in New York, ignored the good advice given to him by local residents and decided to walk the few blocks back to his hotel late at night after his show.

His route involved walking through a narrow subway tunnel. Halfway through the passage he was nervous to see that there was a large shabbily dressed gentleman moving menacingly in his direction.

He was apparently nervous but saw boldly going forward as the only option. They brushed past each other in the narrow tunnel and when he reached the other end he discovered his wallet had gone.

At this point, you or I would not probably have done what he did next. Having partaken of a beverage or three, he spun round and hared back down the tunnel, seized hold of the man, spun him round and loudly and aggressively demanded his wallet back.

A risky strategy usually, but on this occasion the man, confronted by a frenzied English actor half his size, stared at him wildly for a moment before handing the wallet over and haring off at great speed.

It wasn’t until the following day that the actor discovered that he had had his wallet all the time and was now the not so proud owner of his imagined assailant’s wallet as well.

Sober now and contrite he contacted the real injured party and abjectly apologised before arranging to restore his property to him.

Several valuable lessons learned there.

I shared this story with my family when I spoke to them on the phone later, only to be told that one of my daughters had had her handbag stolen while shopping in High Wycombe. And as I write this no one has phoned to apologise or return it.