Having found no comfort cosseted in the crimson robes of a Lord of the Realm in Westminster, [Conrad Black] wished to expedite his return to the country he had abandoned at the behest of then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien. This was not because he spotted a travel poster and suddenly recognized Canada as an empty land filled with wonders. It was, well, just in case he might require rapid transfer to one of Her Majesty's Golf Clubs disguised as minimum-security penitentiaries, such as the one whose hospitality his former partner David Radler could shortly be enjoying.

The matter was too urgent to leave to his retinue of legal advisors, who outnumbered the population of Guelph. So, according to turnout, he decided to take the issue of reclaiming his castaway citizenship into his own hands. On a staff list of the prime minister's office in Ottawa he spotted "Swotty," a former classmate at Upper Canada College, where young Conrad had been an indifferent student for eight years. He would just phone good old Swotty and get his passport back.

When he asked, with unaccustomed modesty, whether Swotty remembered him, the reply was edgy. "Oh, I remember you alright, Conrad." But instead of happily reminiscing about their student days, Swotty reminded him how, in the spring of 1959, UCC's principal, the Reverend C. W. Sowby, interrupted the examination process to reveal that young Conrad had broken into the school's office, stolen the exam papers and sold them to his classmates. Sowby ordered the entire upper school back to write the tests over again. Only this time, they were harder. Black was expelled and wrote off the escapade as a prank. But his classmates never forgot, and as for returning his Canadian passport, Swotty gently told the Lord of Crossharbour to go fuck himself.

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