John Darwin brings out the Reggie in us all

At the weekend, John Darwin, certified to have died back in 2002, turned up at a police station, claiming not to remember anything about the past five years. He was reunited with his sons and his supposed widow was located in Panama.

On Tuesday, she was saying she was as "amazed as anyone" that he was alive. On Wednesday, thanks apparently to Google, the photo of the couple together in Panama last year turned up and Mr Darwin was arrested on suspicion of fraud.

Yesterday, we got an explanation for the whole weird story when it was suggested that he had come back from the dead purely to get revenge on his wife, when she left him in Panama City but held on to all their assets in her own name.

On the streets yesterday, you could see people actually grinning with pleasure as they took in the headline "Canoeist Took 'Revenge' On Runaway-Wife". It had all worked out so well - mystery, twist, resolution - in such good time, too.

The great case of the return of Martin Guerre, for example, took years to resolve. He was a French peasant who, in 1548, after being accused of stealing grain, disappeared. In 1556, an impostor came to the village claiming to be Martin Guerre, convincing the family, claiming an inheritance and having children with Guerre's wife. Only in 1560 did the real Martin Guerre return - and the impostor was hanged for fraud and adultery.

A top yarn but longwinded. Now, thanks to search engines and jpegs, we can move from fascinating puzzle to gratifying solution in a few days.

And that's great because we all love toying with the idea that we might, if pushed too far, just walk out on our lives. Even Philip Larkin, who never escaped from fishy old Hull, dreamed of the Poetry of Departures: "Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,/as epitaph:/He chucked up everything/ And just cleared off,/And always the audacious, purifying,/ Elemental move."

Larkin professed that he'd go off like a shot - "Yes, swagger the nutstrewn roads,/ Crouch in the fo'c'sle/ Stubbly with goodness". But he never went, staying home to the end.

What makes the Darwins' story so satisfying to all of us who have never succumbed to our own dreams of clearing off is the way the deception has unravelled. They seem to have concocted a fantastic scam, run halfway around the world and then were undone by a common or garden domestic. They would have done better never to have left Hartlepool. And you can't say fairer than that.