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Authors sensibly shun coincidence in plotlines, because it would strike the reader as a failure of imagination. And yet, and yet - how often we find it in real life. Who was it issued a so-called press release, one which naturally failed to get any press coverage, on an ill-starred Friday the Thirteenth (in July 2007) about the Charity Commission and Community Cricket Trust? None other than Barrie Stuart-King's alter ego, Della Rebours.

Rebours, appropriately enough, is a word totally without meaning in English. Coincidentally, though, just across the Channel, au rebours de la verite translates as "contrary to the truth." What could be more apt? As the facts about the squandering of ACU&S's reserves came to light, Della's How's That editorials became ever more shrilly au rebours de la verite. Then, as those responsible scuttled away to set up secretively as opposition to the association they had almost wrecked but of which they were still Council members, Della Rebours scurried along post-haste to lend her great weight to the dishonourable cause.

• Contrary to the truth, and because Companies House did not look very hard, Messrs Brandon, Freeman, Warren, Fielden, Bennett and others were seen as fit to be directors.
• Contrary to the truth, and because Companies House failed to realise that any funding was, as usual, entirely imaginary, ICUS was seen as fit to be registered as if it were a proper company.
• Contrary to the truth, and because the Charity Commission's procedures are as full of holes as an old gorgonzola, the comically named Community Cricket Holdings (or by this time even more comically "Trust", not holdings) was registered as a charity.

They got something right, there, in a way. It is a charity case alright. So far, instead of the modest (modest for Stuart-King, that is. He likes to talk millions usually) £400,000 it was projected to raise in its first year, it has yet to get to the first pound of that. Poor old Keith Pont - he jumped ship from ECB and landed on a leaky raft full of all kinds of rot - and Darrell Hair were the two who announced the Charity Commissioner's blunder that ill-starred Friday 13th! "This," Keith Pont was supposed to have said, "completes a trio of remarkable achievements by the CCT-led Consortium." Sorry, Keith. Contrary to the truth, again.

April 2009.