JOURNALISTS are a curious breed. Just as the rest of the world is looking forward to Christmas and then onto the New Year, journalists are looking backward to what has just been.

You can't move in the newsagent's for reviews of the year.

While preparing The Northern Echo's annual look-back, the comic stupidity of criminals was striking.

In January, Cleveland Police placed a drugs awareness caravan outside the house of known dealer Paul Roth. After a day, an angry Roth came storming out and protested loudly to officers that they were ruining his livelihood.

He is now serving seven years for dealing. "He's not the brightest of blokes," said a police spokesman.

Still in January, Raymond Casling from Redcar boasted to his old school pals on the Friends Reunited website: "I'm doing very well. I'm selling a lot of Charlie (cocaine) in Redcar and I've got three sports cars."

Police spotted his message, and he was sentenced to three years. "We couldn't believe that he would be so stupid," said a police spokesman.

In August, burglars broke into a home in Nunthorpe and were scared off by a parrot. Matilda, a 14-year-old African Grey, greets all visitors with: "Hello, who are you?" If she doesn't receive a reply, she squawks: "Hey, you, come over here!" At which point, the burglars fled.

It is the second time in three years that Matilda has saved her owners' property.

Then the laughing stopped. We reached November. While the rest of the country waited for the Soham trial, Teesside Crown Court heard the case of Alan and Elizabeth Rees of Cockerton, Darlington.

Rees, 37, sent his 15-year-old son into a shop in Cockerton to buy him some cigarettes. Rakhvinder Singh Garcha, 29, a father-of-two who was working behind the counter, refused to break the law. Enraged, Rees stormed into the shop and threatened to torch it. Mr Garcha confronted him. They spilled out into the street. Rees drove off in his Vauxhall Astra carrying Mr Garcha 400 yards on the bonnet, finally doing an emergency stop to throw him off.

He left his victim for dead and returned home just around the corner. He and his wife Elizabeth cleaned the car and repaired the windscreen wiper damaged when Mr Garcha clung to it.

Rees cut his hair and shaved his moustache to conceal his identity. Next morning, as Elizabeth prepared to take the car through the carwash to remove some awkward marks on the bonnet, the pair were arrested.

By the time the case came to court in November, Mr Garcha had been taught how to walk again, but requires 24-hour care, cannot care for his wife or young children, suffers epileptic fits and has no forehead as the bone had to be removed.

Elizabeth belatedly changed her plea to guilty for attempting to pervert the course of justice, but she was spared jail for the sake of their four children aged between six and 16.

Rees was found guilty of causing GBH and was sentenced to four years, and could be out within two. It emerged afterwards that he had a string of convictions for violence, criminal damage and obstructing police, and was convicted in 1994 of a road rage incident.

Judge Peter Fox said: "It is the worst case I have encountered in nearly 40 years of practising."

Some criminals are so poor they deserved to be laughed at; others are so despicable they make you physically ill.