Pitt the Piddler

William Pitt is a name that's known to all Britishers. Yet surprisingly, Kevin William Pitt - a British policeman who has been fined for relieving himself in public in central Vilnius - is not descended from the two Wiliam Pitts who attained the rank of Prime Minister.

Mr Kevin William Pitt of Cleveland, England, was captured on camera back in 2002 as he endeavoured to relieve himself against a wall in Vilnius's Old Town. Unluckily for Mr Pitt, that wall turned out to be a part of the Presidential palace, a building where Napoleon Bonaparte once stayed on his fateful journey to Moscow.

Although Mr Pitt's subsequent losses were hardly as substantial as Bonaparte's, the Vilnius city court ruled that the police officer would have to pay a 200 litas fine.

Given that 200 litas is not more than 40 British pounds, one might have imagined that Mr. Pitt would have been happy to pay the fine and put the whole matter behind him. Not so. Following a rejection of an appeal to Lithuania's Supreme Court, Mr Pitt has now filed a complaint against Lithuania at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. It will be the first case of such kind.

Will Mr. Pitt triumph against the anti-pissers? We're not holding our breath. At this juncture, Vilnius Life takes the opportunity to advise all travelling Brits to avoid Brian Jones' dictum: ''We piss anywhere man."