Radio ga-ga

What is it with me? Do I have a flashing neon sign proclaiming "willing victim" above my head? Today, local commercial radio folk KCFM collared me as I meandered through the streets of Beverley, asking me what I thought about gangs of youths drinking in the street. "Let them," I said, only forming my words into a more vox pop-friendly sentence. I decided to go for the sensational approach. "Debauchery is just a rite of passage and, let's face it, we're all guilty of behaving innapropriately at some point in our lives. If not now then certainly in our youth. Shall we stop the scaremongering? Some gangs of young people are actually quite nice and merely gather together for social reasons, not to intimidate others." "So," the interviewer confronted me, "the police should just let them get on with it, let them drink in the street and do what they like?" "Well, within reason, otherwise we'd be looking at a state of anarchy the likes of which KCFM wouldn't know how to deal with." I paraphrase myself, of course. But, I'm delighted to say that on no occasion did I refer to groups of young people as "yobs". Didn't I do well?