Dark deeds of the wartime crooks

While the Germans blitzed cities as a means of crushing civilian morale and paving the way for invasion, Fraser - or Mad Frankie, as he's been immortalised in criminal history - was busy lining his own pockets.

He used his call-up papers to light the morning fire and then, as air raid sirens sounded, "whatever we were doing, it was time to go to work". By work, he meant thieving and looting. He even duped innocent bystanders into helping load up looted goods from homes and business damaged in the bombings.

Mad Frankie wasn't the alone in taking advantage of the chaos of war. Crime rates in blitz cities almost doubled as looting, armed robbery and black marketing spiralled out of control.

It was, he said, "the best period to be a rascal" as "war was a criminal's paradise". So much for digging for victory and all pulling together in times of trouble. Instead, the Blitz and blackout brought many opportunities to steal. The public was unaware this was going on as, in an early example of spin, the government suppressed details for fear of morale dropping.

Besides Mad Frankie, the programme found other criminals willing to own up. Spud Murphy was released from borstal to help the war effort but helped himself instead. In Manchester, Roy Hill saw his dad die of TB and his best friend perish in the bombing. He scrambled in the wreckage to find the body. "He was dead and if I was going to die, I wanted more than he had," was his justification for being a wartime criminal.

And it wasn't just men. Women turned to prostitution. A raid of a brothel in London in 1943 discovered a group captain, naval officer and army officer in bed (although not with each other). Details were hushed up.

Shoplifting was an activity among women, including Fraser's sister. "We were the only two thieves in the family," he said, as if this was a good thing. The Forty Thieves was a wartime group of top women shoplifters. "Once a woman was recruited, she knew she'd made it," said Fraser.

Today, female criminals look like Jaime Murray in Hustler - and the sight of her in a tight-fitting catsuit was enough to make anyone turn to crime. She and her fellow con artists are rogues of the lovable variety who, this week, decided to steal the Crown Jewels. Not all of them, just the Star of India from the royal sceptre. That was one thing that even Mad Frankie had failed to nick during the blackout.

Laurie Anderson, The End Of The Moon, The Sage, Gateshead

NASA's first (and only, so she informed the audience) artist in residence creates an atmosphere like an eccentric favourite aunt as she saunters between dialogue, anecdote, computer synthesizer and challenging electric violin. Lit candles, dry ice mist and soundscapes resembling waves and wind decorate Anderson's "report" on her two years with the US space agency which began just as the Columbia shuttle crashed to earth in 2003. Her deliciously dry sense of humour orbits regularly, from refusing to believe her initial phone call from NASA was genuine to stutterers who don't stutter at the end of words "because by then it's too late to be afraid". Most stories have a steely sentiment - an amusing tale about her rat terrier Lola-Bell discovering that Californian birds could regard her as prey turned into the effects of the 9/11 attack from the air on New Yorkers.

As a "space agent", she travelled to Baltimore to find that the city's Hubble telescope team decorates the pictures sent back from the solar system "because people like to look at colour". In Pasadena, she discovered the logical rover robots sent to Mars weren't always sure where they were ("just like humans") while NASA's incredible invention of an astronaut's long-term survival suit ended up as part of the US war machine. Poignant, hypnotic, rambling and, occasionally, too clever for its own good, this is performance art worth a shot in any space.

Viv Hardwick

Published: ??/??/2004