After careful consideration I have come to the conclusion that, if we wish to live in a civilised society, we ought to defend the right of cyclists to have sexual relations with their bicycle behind a locked bedroom door.

When I first saw the headline a week ago, about a Scotsman being convicted of simulating sex with a bike, it just raised a wry smile. Only later, when sent the full news story (such tales always linger on the BBC's “most e-mailed” chart) did I realise it was the legal case, not the crime, that should be seen as outraging public decency.

The 51-year-old (let us save him from further exposure), was convicted of “a sexually aggravated breach of the peace by conducting himself in a disorderly manner and simulating sex”. Police were called to an Ayr hostel after two cleaners discovered him, wearing only a T-shirt, holding his bike and moving his hips back and forth. The Sheriff's Court gave him three years' probation — and placed him on the sex offenders register.

What “sexually aggravated breach of the peace”? Those upset cleaning ladies only saw it because they used a master key to open his locked door. It seems that such is our obsession with sex crimes today that even the old adage about “not caring what people do in their own bedrooms” no longer applies.

And what exactly did they hope to achieve by putting him on the sex offenders register? Will it make the anxious bicycle owners of Scotland feel safer at night? Should we all demand the right to know if our neighbours worry their bikes? Perhaps the vacuum cleaner community will also demand protection against uninvited advances. What such bizarre cases do achieve is to lengthen that worse-than-useless register further still, reinforcing the false impression of us being besieged by an army of sexual predators.

I might not like to share a room with a bike-sexual. And I suspect that some other cyclists may harbour unhealthy thoughts about their machines, as they parade about on their “trophy bikes” to show that they are better men than us. But wheeling out the law to say one who “saddles up” in private should be padlocked to the same list as rapists and paedophiles? On your bike.

It appears that a new act has joined the circus surrounding the Madeleine McCann case. No day's news is now complete without this Spanish private detective agency announcing some new “evidence” or declaring that it is “100 per cent certain” Madeleine is still alive, “very, very close” to catching the kidnapper, and guaranteeing it will find her before its six-month contract with the McCanns ends. I am no expert, but all this sounds more like the language of public relations than private detection. The McCanns must spend their campaign funds as they see fit. But it's a mystery why much of the media — from Panorama down — should pay such serious attention to crystal ball-gazers.

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