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Apparently, this chap "would pester drivers for money to wash their cars and if they refused he would dance around gesticulating and licking cameras". He ended up being banned from Stockton town centre for six months.

Obviously, the point of interest for us here is that the cameras he was licking were of the CCTV variety. The BBC tells us: "he wanted to smear the glass so police could not see him harassing motorists".

So far, to the casual reader, this little tale all seems relatively straightforward, if not a little amusing. Imagine a man licking a camera! Hahaha! Those crazy beggars - what'll they think of next?

But the truth of the matter is likely to be far more disturbing - and of far greater concern to the security industry.

A peculiar malady

The case in question bears all the hallmarks of a malady particular to installers. It has no name, but I have taken the liberty of describing it as erotoanthropomorphogadgetism - or Kit Fancying Syndrome, for short.

It would not surprise me at all to learn that the poor gentleman involved in the Stockton Camera Licking Scandal was a former security installer - and it would surprise me even less (negative surprise - a feeling common to many psychics and soothsayers) to discover that he had been trained by the infamous Garry Clarkingham's School of Security Installation and Modern Dance.

Clarkingham was a true radical in the pioneering early days of security installation. A child prodigy, he had secured his own family home at the age of seven by designing and installing an alarm system made only out of twigs, string, and the skeleton of a small horse.

By the age of 14 he'd turned professional, and by the time he was 22, Clarkingham decided that the time was right to give something back to the industry, and set up his School of Installation and Modern Dance.

Why he incorporated the dance element into the primarily security-based training remains a mystery.

Disturbing secrets

On the surface, the new training establishment appeared to be a useful and worthwhile venture - after all, there weren't many free training courses available in those days, and while there was an entrance examination, it was generally agreed the venture made the industry more accessible to people of all financial backgrounds.

However, a dark undercurrent bubbled beneath this seemingly respectable veneer. Unbeknownst to the wider security industry, the young and talented Clarkingham had developed a fixation with the equipment used in security installations that bordered on the sexual.This fetishisation of his kit - cameras, panels, detectors and video recorders - led him to believe that procreation with security kit was a physical possibility.

In his twisted mind, Clarkingham imagined that by producing offspring with the best of his equipment, he would be able to significantly lower his ongoing costs, and thus achieve much higher profit margins than had previously been thought possible.

He also felt that security equipment that was half human would be able to think like a human, and anticipate crimes before they had even happened.

But to carry out his experiments he needed bright, gullible, virile young men, willing to do whatever it took to get ahead in the security game.

He devised his entrance examination, which ensured the pupils he accepted exhibited a combination of installation brilliance combined with the level of naivete necessary to undertake his gruesome 'training' procedures.

Over 50 potential installers were enrolled at the school. And thanks to Clarkingham's idiotic and impossible quest for a camera-child, every single one eventually succumbed to Kit Fancying Syndrome.

The end of the industry?

What's more, the School itself was forced to shut down, thanks to the vigorous and unsightly treatment meted out to the equipment by Clarkingham and his students. The cost of replacement gear became simply too much. Clarkingham himself fled the country in disgrace.

Of course, the real victims of this unfortunate chain of events were the trainee installers themselves. On leaving the school with no qualifications and no prospects, many of them were forced into menial work, or made money in any fashion they could. And every now and then, one of them would slip up - in exactly the same fashion as the Stockton incident I mentioned at the start of this piece.

There has been speculation, in private, that perhaps there is an underlying, subconscious element of Kit Fancying Syndrome in all of us, just waiting for a monster like Clarkingham to let it loose. The psychiatric community, of course denies this is possible.

But if this is true, it could spell the end of security installation as we know it. Equipment would be destroyed in all manner of unspeakable ways. We must hope and pray that it never happens.