Bateman's cartoons were lovely, and famous. They always featured some small person committing a dreadful faux pas.

Things such as asking where the toilet is at an embassy reception, whilst the great and the good regarded him with horror, mouths agape and monocles askew.

Well I am about to draw one of my own.

It features me, huddled in a corner, being stared at by newspaper editors, the entire Albion board, the local chief of police and Lord Bassam. The caption underneath is: "The woman who said the Albion shouldn't do too much about football hooligans."

It is prompted by the Albion's Away Membership Scheme, a grand project precipitated by outbreaks of nastiness at Southend, Chesterfield and elsewhere and reinforced by foolish yobbery at Aldershot.

As background music to such events the police occasionally issue lurid reports that battalions of thugs are communicating on the world wide web before converging from all corners of the land wearing National Front underwear. It is enough to scare the wits out of any self-respecting football supporter.

Am I alone in harbouring the tiniest of suspicions that the police like to up the ante whenever they can, simply so that they can satisfy their self-perception that they are actually members of the Special Boat Squadron?

I do not altogether blame them. Just as it is human nature for BBC weather forecasters to want plenty of weather in their forecasts, so it is natural for a superintendent to talk about war. It is the safe way. Predict the worst and you will not finish up looking like Michael Fish the day after the hurricane.

Anyway, the result of all this was that the Albion board, understandably fearful of Falmer repercussions, scrambled out a scheme designed to ensure that it had a record of everyone attending an all-ticket away match.

With the flexible humility that marks them out they subsequently modified the scheme, but the problem is that it still exists. It will not work.

Troublemakers won't be affected. It is usually possible to buy a ticket at face value outside any away league ground ten minutes before an Albion match.

Ordinary supporters, particularly those living a long way from Brighton, will be. They will find it even harder to roll up to a match with their nephews in tow. The spirit of Goldstone-past, when whole families would decide to trolley along to see the Albion on the spur of the moment, recedes ever further into the background.

As with the introduction of all-seater stadiums, no criticism of Withdean, which cannot be anything else, ordinary people again see their freedoms and pleasures affected by officialdom's reactions to bad behaviour.

Don't get me wrong. Anyone committing the tiniest anti-social offence, whether it involves their mouths or their fists, should have their clothes removed and be placed in a tiny metal cage suspended from the Clock Tower for a week, especially if they come from Brighton, and especially if they claim to be Albion supporters.

However, saying that hooliganism is a football problem is the same as saying that street mugging is a little old lady problem. Muggings could be stopped by banning vulnerable people from going out.

That wouldn't be fair, just as it isn't fair to make gestures against football hooliganism by stopping ordinary supporters from enjoying their innocent pleasures.

When anything untoward ever happens, politicians like to ring their hands and cry: "Something must be done." But getting football administrators to make ordinary people's lives more difficult isn't that thing.