Who needs scriptwriters?

Las Vegas, it will not surprise you to learn, absolutely excels in kitch. O, the money I could have spent on trash! The one I really wanted was a little reproduction of the famous 'Welcome to Las Vegas' sign that stood about eight inches high and had its own tiny little battery operated flashing lights. Gold, pure gold.

Not surprisingly, the Vegas souvenier shops are also absolutely chokkas with CSI t-shirts. (Here in the UK is there are a few episodes of CSI nearly every night, as long as you are not too fussy about what series, what order, and whether or not you have seen it three times before.)

CSI Las Vegas is the first, and many would argue the best. (Mystifyingly, the unrelentingly crap CSI Miami is apparently the most popular. I think this is probably because old Carrot-Top whips off his shades and looks into the middle distance so often that its perfect for drinking games.)Anyway,you can't help thinking about it when you are there, because the casinos look just like sets. Which is what they are, really: big real live sets for the punters to pretend in. The Mall in which where you can experience a fake Venice dusk, complete with gondola and opera singing, is a particularly fine example. Many cities build up around natural resources: mines,rivers, arable land. This one seems to spring straight out of the more prurient depths of the human imagination.

On occasions you couldn't help wondering whether everyone was following a script written a few hundred kilometers to the west in LA. So, when you are walking down an anonymous hotel corridor in the biggest hotel in the world,and you overhear a snippet of dialogue drifting though an open door like "No, man! We can't give it to the police. You know they jus' keep it for themselves," you can't help wondering whether or not you've seen this episode before.

Or, and this is the real beauty of the place, whether you should just sit down and write it.