Being conned beggars belief (From Swindon Advertiser)

Being conned beggars belief

11:05am Wednesday 26th September 2007

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ALL right, I own up. I'm one of the idiots who have fallen for Crying Boy beggar Wayne Rose's pathetic hard luck tale.

And having recognised his story and an Adver photograph of the lying, manipulative pest I'm kicking myself around the block for having allowed myself to be conned by his whimpering.

I mean, it's quite something for a hard-nosed journo of long experience who reckons she can see straight through liars to have to admit she allowed a sob story from a heroin addict fool her to the point where she actually gave him a tenner I'm not kidding... a TENNER!

Crying Boy, approaches people and tells them tearfully that he has been robbed, or lost his wallet, or through no fault of his own has no cash on him. And that has to get to Reading in a hurry.

Why? Because, he says, he's trying to avoid his abusive step-father/has urgent family problems/ has a sick relative there.

I know, I know. It's an unlikely tale.

But Crying Boy's recipe for successfully squeezing cash out of his victims consists of short hair, clean fingernails, being polite and tidily dressed and nicely spoken - plus those tears.

He couldn't do it so successfully if he looked like a scruffy yob.

I swear the tears were real! How the hell does he manage to cry at will? He could probably get himself a job at drama school teaching trainee thespians how to turn on the waterworks without the aid of glycerine or whatever else actors use when a TV role calls on them to cry.

I encountered him in Old Town, before a court issued an Asbo which banned him from begging.

It was a Friday at about 10pm, and having met my daughter at the train station, we were walking from Pizza Express to the Devizes Road car park Crying Boy, who was then 25 and looked five years younger, told me his wallet had been stolen. He had been hoping to meet up with some friends who would lend him some money but they hadn't turned up and it was vital he should catch the last train to Reading.

He told me had some coins in his pocket but needed another £9.60 for a ticket and the bus fare at the other end.

He would give me his jumper, he said, if I could help him. (It was actually rather a nice jumper).

It was a chilly night and I told him it looked better on him than it would on me, and handed over the last note I had in my purse.

My offspring gave me a really hard time on the way home. Why, she said, hadn't I offered to drive him to the station and buy him a ticket to Reading? That would have called his bluff.

To think that I accused her of being a hard-hearted cynic!

So having been caught out, my advice is, don't give money to beggars. And that means any of them.

Don't be conned by the thought that the dogs they use as stage props will starve if you don't drop a couple of quid into the scruffy cardboard box at their feet.

Don't even allow your conscience to be pricked if you see a woman sitting on a cold pavement with small children around her.

You'd be better off making a donation to an anti-drugs charity or the Save the Children Fund.

Don't judge on the book cover

NOTHING succeeds like success, they say. Unless, that is, you're a woman, your job is acting and the tabloids are having a lean day.

On Monday one of them took a cheap pop at Helen Mirren, whose frank autobiography, In the Frame, is just out.

It wasn't the book's revelations about her sex life that interested its showbiz editor, who accused her of glossing over the truth.

Oh no. It was the fact that the dustjacket's stunning picture of the blonde 62-year-old, who won the best actress award at this year's Oscars, had been airbrushed.

So no facial wrinkles. And no veins on her hands.

Because Mirren has rejected the idea of cosmetic surgery the showbiz ed - a man, of course - hinted that there's a touch of hypocrisy here.

But so what? At 62 no woman who's in better than average shape is going to turn down the chance of painlessly looking a tad smoother than reality if she's given the chance.

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