It is most distressing to have the harmonica played badly at one in a public place

Marcel Berlins, musing on the Guardian's Comment Is Free site (one year old today) muses that quality should be a defence when buskers and graffiti artists are caught in public:

I want to see a scheme which - in the public interest, of course - would separate the musically and artistically gifted from the no-hopers of no ability. And any busker or graffiti artist prosecuted under whatever law would have a cast-iron defence: "Yes, I did it - but I'm really talented.

It's a lovely idea, but surely Berlins is having a little joke with us - he knows the impossibility of a legislated definition of 'talent', surely?