Last week, a neighbour asked me to sign a passport application form for her son, whom I have known for 15 years. I did so and countersigned his

photograph as required.

She returned the following day because, having made a mistake and put my Christian name in the wrong box, I had crossed it out, initialled it and corrected the error.

My friend had availed herself of the services of the Post Office to check application forms for accuracy before they are sent off to the Passport Office.

The counter clerk insisted that the form should be filled in without alterations.

But okay, if that's the way it has to be back to square one.

So I filled in the form once again, carefully and neatly. I contrived again to squeeze my signature into the box indicated. Apparently, if the pen strays outside the parameters of the box, the application will also be rejected.

That's computerisation for you. The computer doesn't like things that don't fit in a little box.

So, I reduced my admittedly somewhat flamboyant signature to a fraction of its usual size and crammed into the inadequate space. I was grateful that my name has only ten letters.

Presumably anyone called Persephone Featherstonehaugh-Smith is debarred from attesting to the identity of British citizens, unless they are proficient at tiny writing.

The following day my neighbour returned with the chastening news that the same post office employee had scrutinised the application and rejected it again. The witness, she explained, has to be a professional person.

"Well acting is a profession; he is a professional actor," she had said.

"No, it has to be a doctor, MP, solicitor or clergyman," the clerk replied.

"But he is actually a very recognisable actor, quite well known in fact," she had insisted.

"Well they might accept him if he has a degree," the clerk reluctantly conceded.

People with degrees are better equipped, apparently, to know whether other people look like their photographs and vice versa.

They are clearly a better class of citizen too. And even though MPs don't all have degrees, they are also trustworthy folk by virtue of having been elected to public office. So you could get Jeffrey Archer to sign your passport application, or Jonathan Aitken, with or without degrees.

Dr Shipman could sign your form. But an actor! Sir Anthony Hopkins would not be considered by the Passport Office sufficiently reliable to verify the identity of another. (Unless he had a degree of course.)

So my neighbour went off in search of an upright member of society who may turn out to know her son less well than I did, but whose profession alone might qualify them to fill in a form testifying to the identity of another human being.

So all you shopkeepers, nurses, craftsmen and footballers don't get ideas above your station.

You are neither intelligent nor reliable enough to attest to the identity of your friends, according to the Home Office. Unless, of course, you have a degree!