As a cost cutting measure police forces around the UK are to close down CCTV monitoring control rooms and instead are providing footage from the cameras as a live feed on YouTube. It is hoped that, with the audience that YouTube provides, members of the public will see much more of what’s happening on the nation’s street than the current operators and will give Crimestoppers a call.

‘We’ve had to do this,’ said Chief Superintendent Pratt of Teesside Constabulary, ‘as it’s often so boring that our people nod off and miss important crimes. Only the on-line community have the stamina to stare for hours on end at poor quality footage of people’s arsing about – and now at least we can say the streets are being monitored..’

The scheme is currently undergoing trials in Middlesbrough and demand on the YouTube site is high. The system is interactive, and users can turn the camera by moving their mouse to look at whatever it is that takes their fancy. ‘That’s causing a few problems at the moment,’ said DSI Pratt, ‘we quite often get one person wanting to look at a fight at closing time on one side of the street while someone else wants to watch the lasses mooning on the other side. The camera just goes backwards and forwards and all we get is a wobbly picture of the middle of the street which is no good to anyone. We’ve had to replace several camera motors already.’

With the popularity of the system looking guaranteed, the terrestrial channels are now considering their own CCTV coverage. ‘For some time now we’ve been filming a load of drunk people spilling out of a pub…’ said a BBC spokesman. ‘The girls are always crying and the blokes fighting and swearing. We call our version “EastEnders”.’