Pssst! Could oy interest you in a noice BMW motorbike, evurr so sloightly wet? Then again, what harrm did a little seawarter ever do to a BMW? German engineering brought to you via a little Devonian enterprise! What about a few carsks of woine — come in handy, would they? Or some useful caar paaarts, as we say in this paaart of the wurld? Dog food? A few biscuits, perraps a tad salty now? Nappies? They be yurr sart of thing?

The contents of containers from the stricken vessel MSC Napoli, grounded just off the South Coast, have been washing up on the beaches of Devon’s World Heritage Jurassic shore like a latter-day reprise of Whisky Galore — Compton Mackenzie’s book, and subsequent Ealing comedy, that was inspired by the 1941 shipwreck of the SS Politician and the scramble among Scottish islanders to lay their hands on the ship’s cargo of whisky.

It is, in fact, the responsibility of the Napoli’s owners to clean up the beaches. But civic-minded Britons have gallantly stepped in to help the vessel’s owners in their time of crisis, without waiting to be asked; as briskly as if tidying up the debris on the village green after the annual fête.

Especially busy is the beach at Branscombe, a haven during the Napoleonic Wars for smugglers dodging duties on goods, a time when a cry of “The coast is clear!” would ring out from the Lookout at Branscombe Mouth. Once again it is speckled with scavengers, sifting through steering wheels, exhaust pipes and beauty creams.

Beachcombers have no doubt heeded police advice that it is an offence for them not to report anything they have taken to the Receiver of Wreck. Well, of course. It’s just their sense of tidiness that’s bringing them there, officer; that’s all.