Today's story is 'The Happy Owl' by Celestino Piatti
(repeated on BBC1 and BBC Wales at 4.20 pm)
Reporting the world tonight
John Timpson and Peter Woods and the reporters and correspondents, at home and abroad, of BBC News
and Weather
(Colour)
A weekly programme which focuses on people and the situations which shape their lives.
Reporters Jim Douglas Henry, Jeremy James, Jeanne La Chard, Gillian Strickland,
Desmond Wilcox, Harold Williamson
December crowds gladden the hearts of shopkeepers-and also the shoplifters'; helping themselves to a merry Christmas in a blitz of stealing. Estimates of the annual pilferage from shops vary from £120-million to £280-million, making the Great Train Robbery look like small change. Some small businesses have even been shoplifted right into the bankruptcy court. Every day 75 shoplifters are caught, but security experts estimate that for every one they catch, 10 get away.
Shoplifters come from all ages and classes: schoolchildren stealing for a dare, grannies snatching a little luxury, crooks operating in highly organised gangs, housewives who take something for nothing without really knowing why. It was only in 1832 that Parliament abolished the death penalty for shoplifting, but today it usually attracts small fines or conditional discharge verdicts.
Tonight Man Alive talks to shoplifters, the shopkeepers, and those responsible for punishment, and asks why shoplifting has risen to such epidemic proportions.
(Colour)
Moira Lister and Clement Freud in a kind of game about food and wine with Zena Skinner and Tony Bilson
Host Nicholas Parsons
(Colour)
with her guests Vince Hill, The Rockin' Berries, Peter Rostal and Paul Schaefer
The Douglas Squires Dance Group
(Colour)
A film by Peter Batty to mark the 25th anniversary of the start of the last German offensive of the Second World War.
It was the biggest single pitched battle of the Western Front - over a million troops took part. It was Hitler's most desperate gamble. It was the climax of the Allied invasion of Western Europe - the battle where the German fighting spirit was finally broken. It produced epic struggles, as at Bastogne and St Vith. But it was a time too of deep national humiliation for it contained the biggest mass surrender of American arms of the European war.
(Colour)
An invitation to step into the humorous and imaginative world of James Thurber starring William Windom as John Monroe, Joan Hotchkis as his wife Ellen, Lisa Gerritsen as his daughter Lydia
After all, dog is man's best friend they say. So write a magazine article, call it 'The Dog That Bit People' and you are immediately in trouble.
(Colour)
(Colour)
(Colour)
