I am wanted in eleven different countries. [Largely Brazil and Sweden at the moment, but that's another story.] I am clearly known to Customs officials all over the world. Every airport, ferry landing and international railway station must have a huge poster of me in a secret little room behind a one-way mirror. There can be no other explanation for the fact that I get stopped and searched every time I go through Customs.

My troubles started in 1997, as I alighted from the Copenhagen-Malmö ferry. Unbeknownst to me, a neo-Nazi Combat 18 skinhead had taken the same ferry a week before, and had posted a bomb disguised as a video tape to a former gang member. I can't blame Swedish Customs for choosing to search the one person who was - to all appearances - an English skinhead. Heck, I was flattered. Me? A real skinhead! How marvellous!

Then it happened again a couple of months later, as I returned to the UK after my first visit to Amsterdam. Of course I wasn't stupid enough to bring any contraband back with me. There was no need for me to look shifty as I headed for the 'nothing to declare' lane at Heathrow. But shifty I looked, and I got pulled over by a female Customs official. She went through my bag, unfolding all my most embarrassing belongings: my smelly, holey socks, my skidmarked undies, my maps of the gay scene. And then... she found my stash. My stash of condoms and lube, that is. I was mortified.

This scene has been repeated in virtually every country in western Europe. I anticipate it now, and start the paranoid self-talk every time I pick up my bags. "Try and look normal, Dave. Look straight ahead. Travel with this family group." But, no, I get stopped virtually every time. Hell, I've even been stopped twice coming off the Eurostar from Paris. The last search was particularly rigorous, as the official went over all my belongings with a little vacuum cleaner fitted with a special filter, which she then ran through a machine, presumably looking for traces of drugs. And, yes, I have been strip-searched, too. I won't even go into the hell I went through going through US Customs, with their immigration laws.

Do I have any civil rights in these situations? Is it worth my while to demand - what? a search warrant? A lawyer? Obviously, I have asked myself, "Why me?" Is it the shaved head? The earrings? The attitude-laced walk? The paranoid darting stares? I realise that I probably get stopped because I look guilty. But that doesn't stop me looking guilty - I over-compensate and end up looking like a drug mule, all false, glassy smile and sweat-beaded brow.

Andy, Ian - don't even think about bringing anything illegal back from Hamburg next week. Look, I've seen Midnight Express, OK?