Telegraph 9/5/07 - Jan Moir Our ocean-going idiots manage to stun us again After the international furore about the sailors taken hostage by the Iranians died down, I had hoped never to write about that sorry bunch of nautical half-wits ever again. Yet these ocean-going twits keep coming back to haunt the shuddering British public, in episodes of comic fiasco that suggest they might be secret members of the maritime Keystone Kops, instead of our once great Royal Navy. First, the Mr Bean-lookalike lost his passport, and could not return to naval manoeuvres in the Gulf. Thank God, screamed naval top brass, as they shredded a suspicious-looking small, maroon booklet behind closed doors. Then Bean was photographed in a nightclub, blindfolded in a mock execution pose as he laughed his head off. Doh! Idiot. Now another of the hapless detainees has put the shiny silver suit given to him by his Iranian captors on eBay, hoping to make a few bob out of his ordeal. The MoD has confirmed that it asked the sailor to remove the suit from the site without delay, proving that the Cornwall crew can't even be cheap and stupid properly. You might hope they would hang their heads in shame for the next 100 years, but that is just not the way of our grasping, modern world.