In joke-telling, there is 'The Rule of Three'.
Sometimes, this spills over into real life and overlaps with the saying 'It never rains but it pours'.
In my daily blog three days ago, I mentioned that comedian Martin Soan had broken a rib in a bicycle accident and that a comedian who double-booked himself for two simultaneous shows had caused problems for Martin's Pull The Other One comedy club in January.
In the last year, Pull The Other One has featured top comedy acts like Omid Djalili, Stewart Lee and Arthur Smith.
On Friday, as an end-of-year thankyou to locals, Pull The Other One staged a free comedy show in Nunhead, Peckham. As normal, Martin and Vivienne Soan publicised it widely locally - as they have done for over five years - with flyers and posters. Some of the posters were on bicycles which were ridden round the area.
The show was a success - despite what appear to be illegal actions by a local wanna policeman.
To save money on paying the police, England and Wales are now blessed with cheaper "Community Support Officers" to back-up the 'real' police. I suspect (with no evidence, m'lud) that these are often wanna policemen and wannabe policewomen with over-developed superiority complexes.
"It seems we now have a special constable," Martin Soan told me yesterday, "who has taken it upon himself to tear down our posters and most disturbingly rip them off our bikes... I'm not sure that's within his powers or even if it's legal."
I would have thought it was most definitely not legal. This guardian of 'The Law' appears to have decided to remove a piece of private property attached to a private vehicle without the owner's permission which I would think, in legal terms, must be pure vandalism and damaging private property - perhaps even theft.
"This bloke," says Martin, "rides around on a bike with a 'Comunity Warden' sticker on it.... Am I within my rights to rip that off?... Or deface a Sainsbury's lorry?... Or paint over shop signs?... He also told me that he would remove my bike if I put a poster on it again."
Martin's wife Vivienne, who co-runs Pull The Other One, says: "The community policeman has systematically taken down all our publicity, telling us that we are making money from free advertising at the council's expense. He says we are no longer allowed to put our poster on local notice boards and even took down a poster from British Rail property on which we have placed posters over the last five years!"
To my mind, this seems to be, again, a case of the 'Community' wannabe policeman damaging private property which stands on private land and removing property without the owner's permission.
An interesting mindset for a guardian of 'The Law'.
"Mind you," Vivienne told me yesterday, "it has saved Martin a job, as he usually takes down all the posters the day after the show. And Martin's rib is obviously greatly improved, as he wants to punch the guy in the face!"