Being something of an inquisitive journalist with a penchant for visitingthose countries which normal people don't, I have, over the years, developed a new hobby. Some of us collect stamps, cigarette cards or matchboxes. I collect interrogations. And the preliminary to interrogation is, of course, arrest and detention, which makes me, perhaps, a suitable person to dwell for a few moments on some of the activities that can land the innocent traveller in prison, as well as the best way of handling matters arising thereof.

In some countries, there are no set rules governing what is and is not a crime. Different regimes have different ways of playing the game, and it's not just cut-and-dried crimes such as robbing a bank or even dealing on the black market that can put you behind bars. Perhaps a brief resumé of some of my own experiences will give you the idea and suggest means of extracting yourself from the clutches of a warped authority.

That nasty word 'espionage' has become a stock accusation, beloved by perverted authority worldwide. Spying covers a multitude of sins and is a most conveniently vague charge to lay against anyone who sees more than is good for him (or her). It is often in dictatorial countries that you have to be most careful, but some other states have picked up on the idea, too. Spying, of a sort, can also be directed against you. In my time, I have been followed by the minions of the secret police forces in Prague and Vladivostok for hours on end. Personally, I quite enjoyed the experience and led them a merry dance through a series of department stores in a vain effort to shake them off. If nothing else, I gave them blisters.

During World War II, to go back a bit, I escaped from a POW camp in Poland through the unwitting courtesy of the German State Railway. The journey came to an abrupt end at Gestapo HQ in Krakow. In post-war years, the then Orient Express carried me, visa-less, into the Stalin-controlled former Czechoslovakia. That journey put me inside as a compulsory guest of the STB, the former Czech secret police. I have met minor inconveniences of a similar nature in countries such as Russia, Albania and Yugoslavia, as well as several Middle Eastern nations, but it was only in the 1970s that I bumped into real trouble again - in Idi Amin's Uganda. Interrogations à la James Bond...

The venues of all my interrogations have been depressingly similar. In Kampala, for instance, it consisted of a bare, concrete-walled office containing a cheap desk, a hard-backed chair or two, a filing cabinet, a telephone and an askew photograph of Idi Amin. This consistently describes Krakow, Prague and Kishinev, except that in Nazi days nobody would have dreamt of an askew Fuhrer. Prague boasted an anglepoise lamp, but then communist methods of extracting information always did border on the cinematic.

Methods of arrest or apprehension obviously vary with the circumstances. For the record, in World War II, I was handed over to the Gestapo by a bunch of Bavarian squaddies who could find no excuse for my lobbing a brick through the window of a bakery after curfew. In Czechoslovakia I was caught crossing a railway bridge in a frontier zone and, with five guns aligned to one's navel, heroics are hard to come by. In the Soviet Union it was simply a case of my being caught with my trousers down in a 'soft-class' toilet while in possession of an out- of-date visa valid only for a place where I was not. And in Uganda there was no reason at all, beyond an edict from Idi that stipulated a policy of "Let's be beastly to the British".

But in Uganda, the line of questioning was different. It wasn't so much why had I come, but why had I come for so brief a period? The other sticking point was the presence of the young Ugandan law student arrested with me. Being in close confinement in a railway carriage for 24 hours, we had become travelling companions, which, coupled with my suspiciously brief stay, spelled 'dirty work at the crossroads' to the Ugandan authorities.

Upon rummaging about in our wallets and pockets, they found bits of paper on which we had scribbled our exchanged addresses. It had been the student's idea and a pretty harmless one but, abruptly, I was made aware how small inconsistencies can be blown up into a balloon of deepest suspicion. All along I maintained I hardly knew the guy. (Which reminds me that the Gestapo, too, had an irksome habit of looking for a scapegoat among the local populace.) Then we came to the next hurdle. "How is it your passport indicates you are a company director but this card shows you are a journalist?" To explain that I was once a company director and had retained the title in my passport in preference to the sometimes provocative 'journalist' would only have complicated matters. So I offered the white lie that I was still a company director and only a journalist in my spare time.

In another of Kampala's Police HQ interrogation rooms, all my proffered answers had to be repeated at dictation speed. It was partly a ruse, of course, to see if the second set matched the first - and I was going to be damn sure it did.

And, you know, there comes a moment when you actually begin to believe that you are a spy or whatever it is they are trying to suggest. It creeps up in some harmless answer to a question. In Kampala I felt the symptoms and resolved to keep my answers simple - and remember them for the second time round.

For instance: "What school did you attend?" I named the one I was at the longest. There was no need to mention the other two.

My regimental association membership card came up for scrutiny. "What rank were you?" I was asked. —"Corporal," I replied, giving the lowest rank I had held. Pride alone prevented me from saying "Private". —"Which army?" came the further enquiry. I had to admit that it was British.

Every now and again, I would put in a bleat about having a train to catch - more as a cornerstone of normality than a hope of catching it. And finally, in most interrogations, there does come a point when there is a lull in proceedings during which you can mount a counter-attack. The "Why-the-hell-am-I-here? What-crime-am-I-supposed-to-have- committed?" sort of thing, which at least raises your morale if not the roof.

Of course, in Nazi Germany such outbursts helped little, because in a declared wartime one's rights are minimal, and the Gestapo had such disgusting methods of upholding theirs. But in the grey world of undeclared wars, the borderline of bloody-mindedness is less well defined. At Kishinev, the KGB had the impertinence to charge me a fiver a day for my incarceration in a filthy room in a frontier unit's barracks. I voiced my indignation loud and clear and eventually won a refund.

In Czechoslovakia, my outburst had a different effect. The interrogator was so bewildered that he raised his eyes to the ceiling long enough for me to pinch one of his pencils. And in the cell that became my home for months, a pencil was a real treasure.

I should add that, in general, the one demand you have a right to make is to be put in touch with your own embassy or consulate. I once wasn't - and it caused an international incident.

I suppose one lesson I ought to have learnt from all this is to take no incriminating evidence, such as press cards, association membership cards, other travellers' addresses and the like. But a few red herrings do so add to the entertainment.