TO my eyes, the sight of Gary Glitter makes a gutter slug look lovable. It's not his appearance that makes me recoil. It is the knowledge that he molested children, aged 10 and 11.

Once people looked up to Glitter (who has just been freed from a Vietnam jail but was, this morning, at a Thai airport refusing to board a connecting flight to London). Not any more. His reputation today would bring dishonour to the name of grub'.

Part of me is glad he looks likely to return to Britain. It is to our shame that many British paedophiles go abroad to practise their gross behaviour.

Glitter would, at least, be visible here. And, in fairness, he has served his sentence.

What is disturbing is that there are huge numbers of convicted paedophiles in Britain. Even 10 years ago a Dorset Police report revealed that 600 lived down here.

Obviously, many offenders have never been caught and you wonder how many children live in misery because of it.

Today, worryingly, contact through the web gives paedophiles the chance to delude themselves through trying to "normalise" their cruel, deviant behaviour.

Convicted paedophiles go on the Sex Offenders Register that, despite calls for a Sarah's Law to be introduced in Britain, allows them anonymity. Sex offenders have to live somewhere and vigilante behaviour, certainly, is no answer to this hugely complex problem. The authorities say they know their whereabouts and naming and shaming drives predatory paedophiles underground, putting children in greater danger.

I hope they are right. However it is achieved, sex offenders need to be tracked. And children protected.

Gary Glitter once hit it big with the song Hello Hello I'm Back Again.

He is. More's the pity.