Crimewatch

I had run a few clicks on the treadmill and was damp and aching with the vigour of the young man I remain to be. I left my sweaty clothes in a little pile on top of my trainers whilst I used the shower. When I returned, my underpants had gone. Nothing else. Just my underpants.

There was nobody around, so the scoundrel had already escaped with his prize. I didn't see who was hanging about before my shower because I wasn't wearing my glasses. This wretch could have been watching me for weeks, plotting his grand theft, choreographing his movements to minimise his risk. Perhaps it was a gang of them like in Rififi, each with a special skill, working together to grab my precious gruds with the hooked handle of an umbrella and stuff them into a tupperware hidden in the false bottom of a briefcase.

I returned to the scene of the crime a week later, hoping that the depraved rotter would be a man of regular habits. I had written the falsehood "I have a fungus and crabs" on the label of my pants just in case he struck again and, instead of having a shower, I hung around the hairdryers looking as inconspicuous as a large man in a small towel can look whilst peeping round a corner. Sadly, my stakeout was a blowout. The underpant thief remains at large. Don't have nightmares.