HOW is it that some people can not even so much as pick their nose surreptitiously at their desk without being spotted and castigated publicly while others quite literally get away with murder in their spare time?

Do you know? Because I, for one, don't.

All I do know is that whatever it is that allows some people to skulk around, unnoticed in the dark shadows of life, doing exactly as they please, right or wrong, I haven't got it.

It seems like I can't even cough out loud without creating a tidal wave in Eastern Taiwan -- and I definitely cannot get away with anything I'm not supposed to.

I say this as a known criminal in the Evening Telegraph newsroom.

My crime? Well, I accidentally nicked a guide book from the gift shop at Chester Zoo. I'm sorry but, honestly, it's hardly the Great Train Robbery. Shall I give myself up to the zoo police? Get a grip, will you?

I mean, yes, I'm in the wrong, but it's not exactly the crime of the century.

And I really don't think it constitutes a week's worth of accusations, finger pointing and sly digs about me turning to a life of crime, do you?

So, shock, horror, I diddled one of the country's most popular tourist attractions out of £3.50 by taking a map by mistake.

Big wow.

Show me the gallows, I say.

And anyway, it was an easy mistake to make in that after paying a tenner to get into the flippin' place, I thought I might be allowed to find my way around it for free.

But no.

It seems you have to pay extra if you want to breathe the air in Chester Zoo, apparently, never mind read a map.

Only I didn't realise that until I wandered out of the door with one tucked firmly under my arm. Suspiciously tucked under my arm some would say. I was spotted instantly.

Nightmare. But what do you do? Well, personally, I fenced it through a seven-year-old bat fan who went on to discard it anonymously five minutes later in a manmade cave. Sorry. I can't do anything, really.

I once walked out of a shop with a 5p packet of chewing gum thinking someone else had paid for it and couldn't sleep for a week.

But, now I think of it, maybe that's a good thing.

Maybe it shows I am essentially a good egg. That I am not the sort of person to conceal any grisly secrets or keep something terrible to myself while simultaneously going about my business au natrelle.

You see, it's the people without such conscience you really need to worry about. The ones that go about doing whatever, whenever and to whoever, without a second thought.

And, more than that, I think those get away with it so confidently and blatantly are more dangerous still.

Take whoever murdered tragic Sarah Payne or Stephen Lawrence.

They seem to have popped up out of nowhere to commit some of the most heinous crimes this country has ever seen and then vanished without a trace. Piff, paff, puff! They are out there -- it's just no one seems to know where.

That I find particularly, if not incredibly difficult to believe. I mean, someone must know or at least suspect who they are and what they have done.

My friend spotted me with that particularly 'hot' map of the elephant house in under five seconds flat and, though she didn't say anything, keeping quiet about a £3.50 guidebook as opposed to murderers, paedophiles and rapists is not quite the same thing, is it?

I really don't know how anyone can do that.

I wonder what happens when Crimewatch comes on and they find themselves sitting next to the spitting image of a photofit on the settee or when a jumper like the one on the washing line is held up to the screen.

What would you do? Start whistling, read the TV guide absent mindedly or pretend you've fallen asleep?

I can't imagine -- but surely any right minded person would ring the programme when faced with any such atrocity.

Unless, of course, it's a dark haired, suspicious-looking 25-year-old reporter on the screen, whistling aimlessly around a zoo with a 10ins X 10ins booklet stuffed down the back of her pants.

OK? Good. I'm glad we got that cleared up at least.