South

Joe Crowley goes inside the story...

At various points in my life I have been a serial loser.

I know what you're thinking, I really shouldn't be so hard on myself.

How right you are, but what I mean is, in the past I've had a talent for losing things.

If you entrusted me with a possession or if I bought something new, the chances were slim that it would still be with me just a few months later.

Losing my mobile was once commonplace.

Thankfully these days I've entered some kind of losers' remission - finally competent at keeping my collectables.

That said it's taken several cameras, wallets, phones and even a couple of incredibly sentimental and irreplaceable items to help straighten me out.

Each time I did lose something I reported it but I've never had any of it back.

But why would I?

After all, it was probably nicked and sold on, and even if it was handed in, I certainly hadn't gone to the trouble of registering or security marking my property.

If, however, you have had something returned you will appreciate just how good that feels.

Lost and found

With your 'lost' mobile phone once again in hand society is great once more.

Mankind is transformed from the irritating, rude mass of plebs you fight your way through at rush hour to a nation of kind, benevolent Samaritans - and all is well with the world.

When I was a runner for a London theatre producer, I once had to pick my boss's phone up from Kennington Tube in London.

He'd left it on a train and some kind soul had handed it in to station staff.

Bike with police security mark.

But what was remarkable was that a member of staff had shown the initiative and effort to take the phone above ground, search through the recently dialled numbers and call the office to let me know where the phone was before the battery died.

Soon boss and phone were reunited and we can gloss over all the disabled people who probably weren't helped on or off trains during the five minutes said staff member was doing his good deed above ground.

The point is that when it is possible to identify the owner of lost property, it simply doesn't take that much effort.

The Tube worker managed to do it and it wasn't even his job, so you'd think that the guys in police lost property would always manage it because, well, it is their job.

But as our film shows, that's clearly not the case.

Lost property

The police have blamed their mistakes shown in our film on individual errors and they say there are loads of examples of lost property being successfully returned.

Maybe that's right but what's truly frustrating is the fact that we'll never know how many cases the police have failed to resolve.

When we did test the system, we found it wanting so let's just hope that our film plays some role in making police lost property more effective.

As for me, I hope the system works better but needless to say I won't be expecting too much sympathy from the police if my bike really does go missing.