Mark Andrews: Litter louts, fly-tipping, and Schofield show puts TV in the gutter

Sixteen months is a long time in television, it seems. This week, it emerged that the disgraced presenter will be the subject of a three-part Channel 5 series called Cast Away, where Schofield will spend 10 days on a desert island giving his version of the tawdry scandal that brought about his downfall.

How very tasteful. I can see why Schofield might seize an opportunity to revive his TV career, but what was Channel 5 thinking of? How cynical do you have to be to turn allegations of sexual exploitation into a form of light entertainment?

Sadly, in our voyeuristic, celebrity-obsessed world, Cast Away will almost certainly be a ratings hit. As P T Barnum once said, nobody ever lost money underestimating the taste of the public.

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Two cheers for the successful prosecution of litter lout Kelly Lennon, who was ordered to pay £500 for throwing rubbish out the window of her car in Walsall.

The birch would have been preferable, obviously, but I suppose relieving her of a monkey is about as good as we are going to get in woke Britain.

On a couple of occasions in the past, when stuck in heavy traffic, I dealt with such miscreants by tossing the litter back into their car. On the first occasion, the big, tattooed bloke who had hurled his cigarette packet out the window just looked sheepish and apologetic. But the young girl who threw a burger carton onto the carriageway and her mother were less receptive. I felt somewhat chastened when they tried to rip the mirrors off my car and tailgated me for two miles when the lights changed.

Reporting litter offences to the authorities produced mixed results. On one occasion, a licensed taxi driver received a knock on the door from a council official, and was fined. But on another occasion, after filling out all the appropriate forms and giving a witness statement, it turned out that the car from which the litter emanated was not registered with the DVLA. That's the problem with this sort of thing, the people you are dealing with tend not to be law abiding.

Which brings me to why it is only two cheers for the punishment meted out to Kelly Lennon. The reason the case ended up before Dudley Magistrates was because Lennon, of Eliot Street, Birmingham, had ignored a fixed-penalty notice. She also failed to show up for court, leading to the case being heard in her absence.

I do hope the authorities are pretty robust in making sure she pays her fine promptly. I reserve my third cheer until we are certain she will be significantly out of pocket for her misdemeanour, and will not be repeating it anytime soon.

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Also £500 out of pocket is Isabelle Pepin, from Bournemouth, fined for fly-tipping after leaving an old Ikea cabinet outside her house for passers-by to take.

She said she thought she was 'doing a nice thing', and encouraging the re-use of old items.

Up to a point, maybe, but on balance I think my sympathy is with the council. If everybody starts leaving junk outside their homes, it's not long before pleasant, leafy neighbourhoods are transformed into Third World shanty towns.