The real scandal is that nobody offered to buy the Iranian soldiers’ stories

Aweary fortnight of wailing over those 15 hapless boatmen, and what have we learned? In a nutshell, nothing. Love Des Browne or loathe him, much of the criticism he has faced is misplaced. The problem is not, surely, that British personnel were encouraged, albeit only briefly, to sell their stories. The problem is that Iranian personnel were not.

So we know all about poor Seaman Batchelor, and the tragic loss of his iPod, but we don’t know that Darius was in a foul mood because he reckoned Hamid had been in his lunchbox and nicked his shishleek. Perhaps tensions were high because Mojtaba had slipped over the side and got a soggy sock, and Parviz, who had a spare pair in his backpack, wasn’t letting on. Perhaps, when they all first set their astonished eyes on Leading Seaman Turney (smoking, I should like to think, even then), there was a fevered discussion as to whom she most resembled — Pamela Anderson or, in a weird sort of way, Charles Clarke. We don’t know. We shall never know. I can’t help but regard this as a shame.

Even once they were back on land, we only know half the story. Less than half, in fact. We know about the cruel Mr Bean taunt that rendered Batchelor distraught, but we don’t know what other classic British comedy characters were tried, without success. We don’t know about Niyoosha’s sterling Norman Wisdom impression, met with only blank, terrified incomprehension. We don’t know about Milhad and Mohsen nearly coming to blows in the corridor over whether the 18-year-old Seaman would even have heard of Rimmer from Red Dwarf, or whether anybody pre-Ricky Gervais, frankly, would be a waste of everybody’s valuable time.

Ask yourself — why did the Iranians come out of this with the dignity of their armed forces intact, pretty much, while ours took such a beating? Better discipline? Stronger moral fibre? Piffle, surely. It is all in the exposure. Yet do we seriously believe that none of the Revolutionary Guard even wanted to sell their stories? Nobody even thought to ask. Look east, red-top editors, with your chequebooks. Max Clifford, get thee to the Gulf. It is your duty, as patriots.

Granted, it might be hard for Iranian personnel to continue living, subsequently, under President Ahmadinejad’s ill-tempered (and, invariably, ill-tailored) yoke. But even the meagre £10,000 doled out to Seaman Batchelor would go a long way in the Middle East. So perhaps they could move somewhere else. Bits of Israel are quite nice. And if the Iranians wanted the big bucks, well, they’d have to beef up their stories accordingly. You think our lot sounded slack-jawed and unprofessional? You ain’t heard nothing yet. You certainly ain’t heard Farrouhk and Nariman, with their sights set on a condominium in Haifa.

We are a society that will always buy a story. This is a weapon in our metaphorical arsenal, more powerful, perhaps, than many of those in our actual arsenal. Think of the sheer glorious haphazardness of this whole episode. The armed forces who think it is OK to talk, the government that thinks it is OK to let them, the media that thinks it is OK to publish, all of it. Would any of this have happened under a tyrannical regime? The lasting impression is one of a sort of multi-faceted chaos of selfish competing interests, with authority merely as one screeching voice among many. And, damn it, isn’t that the definition of a capitalist free country? Isn’t that exactly what we are supposed to be trying to export?

So let us no longer allow these despots and tyrants to be the problems of our Western governments. Let us regard them, instead, as the business opportunities of our Western media conglomerates. It would work. When the world was still looking for a peaceable way to get Saddam Hussein out of Iraq, why did nobody suggest a simple seven-figure book deal? Did Ed Victor even leave him a voicemail? Why ever not?

What would it take to lure Kim Jong-il out of North Korea? Perhaps the promise of a multi-network chat show, in the manner of Oprah Winfrey. It would be ratings gold, and he’d surely get paid more. Everybody wins.

With immunity from prosecution and a starring role in a big-budget HBO series about mobsters, Robert Mugabe would be out of Zimbabwe like a shot. And what better way to keep the erratic Pervaiz Musharraf of Pakistan onside on the frontline of the war against terror than to offer him a hefty sum to publish his memoirs? Oh. Wait. We did that one already.

Onward, though, to more serious matters. The bees. Are we not all quite seriously terrified about the bees? Across America, continental Europe and now the UK, they are simply disappearing. The other week, John Chapple of the London Beekeeper’s Association found that three quarters of his hives were empty. ‘Like the Mary Celeste,’ he said, through his facemask sieve.

Where the bees can be, and why they have gone there, nobody knows. Apparently the government’s National Bee Unit (possibly not such a busy unit, hitherto) is now investigating. Some reckon it might have something to do with mobile phones. Either way, it is all very worrying. And, frankly, a bit Douglas Adams.

Could it be that, like his dolphins, the bees have just ... gone? And if they have, and if they aren’t taking us with them, for how much longer will we even believe in bees? A furry insect, which carried life from one plant to the next, each one armed and dangerous, and prepared to sacrifice itself for the greater good of the rest. It’s downright implausible. And let’s not even get started on this ‘honey’ business. This is an animist’s dream.

Bees are too pat, too convenient, too clumsily symbolic. Almost every ancient religion was nuts for them, and no wonder. They won’t just go the way of the dodo. They will go the way of the unicorn.

I once hurled myself to the ground on an African hillside when a swarm of the things emerged, quite literally out of the blue. They meant no harm (en route, perhaps, from A to ... no, no more puns, to somewhere else), but they flew and hummed with a singlemindedness that left me convinced that they knew something that I did not. They’ve always been a touch weird, the bees.

Perhaps, now, a few lucky individuals here and there will have a received mysterious engraved honeycomb in the post. So Long, and Thanks for All the Bougainvillea.

Hugo Rifkind is a writer for the Times.