n unfortunate consequence of extended pub opening hours is the increased likelihood of an encounter with a drunk at what would once have seemed an unlikely time of day. It happened to me in Milton Keynes last week. At 5.30pm, in the 90-minute interval between the two parts of Nicholas Nickleby (reviewed today on Page 9), I went to a pub near the theatre for a bite to eat. As I gave my order in the otherwise deserted bar, a young man reeking of booze barged in demanding instant drinks service for him and his two mates. Seeing the only barman occupied with me, he tried to engage me in conversation with a truculent demand to know whether I was an army officer. Sensing trouble, the barman discreetly contacted his manager and the matter was diplomatically dealt with. The group drank up and left. There had, however, been a nervous few minutes for me.

Reading Jeremy Clarkson's column in the Sunday Times this week, I learned that he, too, had experienced trouble in the same Milton Keynes leisure area. Taking his daughter on a birthday visit to the indoor ski slope there last week, he found himself confronted by a gang of hoodies. He first assumed they were fans of Top Gear, wanting to know about Richard Hammond's head. "But no. What they wanted to know most of all was if I had any security." Clarkson continued: "I asked them politely to leave me alone . . . But they kept coming. And so, figuring that attack was probably the best form of defence, I grabbed the ringleader by his hoodie." At this point, the rest of the group began taking photographs with their mobiles. "Instead of worrying about being stabbed, I was actually thinking: 'Jesus, I'm going to get done for assault if I'm not careful.'" He put they hoodie down - "and in a flurry of swearing and hand gestures . . . he was gone."

Both stories suggest that Milton Keynes continues to follow an ignoble tradition established in the earliest days of the New Town. In last week's Spectator, a letter from reader Robert Ireland described trouble that befell poet Vernon Scannell - or, rather, a group rash enough to menace him.

Scannell, who died on November 17 aged 85, had been poet-in-residence there in the 1960s. "His mild scholarly demeanour," wrote Mr Ireland, "belied the fact that he had been a professional boxer. Drinking in a Milton Keynes pub one evening, some local heavies rather the worse for wear asked him what he did for a living. 'I'm a poet,' he told them, Banter led to insults, then one of them hit him. Scannell floored three of them in quick succession, before returning amiably to his pint . . . They had learned the lesson that if you know what is good for you, you don't mess with poets; they'll bust your nose as soon as look at you."

This was a lesson that was clearly not learned by some of the young people of Berinsfield, the Oxfordshire 'village' (Scannell preferred 'housing estate') to which he was posted in 1975 on another cultural mission. His life there was made a misery by a group of local youngsters who took to chanting at him in the streets - "Scann-ell! Po-et! Scann-ell! Knock-kneed old f****er" - and banging on his windows at the dead of night. Eventually, after they tried to break into his flat, he decided enough was enough, and quit some time before the scheduled end of his nine-month Writing Fellowship arranged by the Southern Arts Association. "The gang's activities," he wrote, "were no longer a severe irritant, a serious nuisance; they were, and had been for some time now, a threat to my very existence."

The words are taken from Scannell's book, A Proper Gentleman, in which he told his story of life in "an unlettered jungle of red bricks, bingo and booze", a place for "the displaced and disreputable". With such acid observations about the village and its residents, the book was guaranteed to provoke furious controversy in Berinsfield on its publication in 1977. Community leaders duly put the boot in, but a happy consequence was the formation of an organisation, Defence of Berinsfield, dedicated to tackling some of the problems of the area.

As the village prepares to celebrate its Golden Jubilee next year, Ken Hall, the chairman of the parish council, said: "It is a village like any other, younger maybe, but with a similar mix of people. The vast majority of people here are decent, upright citizens and Berinsfield is a place to be proud of."

A sub-committee is looking at how the parish council can mark the event. Mr Hall said: "We have four ideas in mind - a bell for the church of St Mary and St Berin, a clock for the church, a memorial garden, or a bench with a plaque on it."

What, no statue of Vernon Scannell?