Hello everyone,

I haven't been here on the forum for years (literally), and, what's worse, my present job is so time-consuming that it's only during the summer holidays that I can afford sitting in an armchair and watching a Columbo episode.

There's something I'd like to ask to you. The other day at my workplace we started talking about Columbo. I don't really know how; it wasn't me who brought him up. Anyway, a workmate said "Do you know why Columbo walks like that?", and I think I said "Walks like what?" at the same time the others said "No!". She said that Columbo stoops (while he doesn't walk in a regal way, I'd never noticed anything special about his walking) because Peter Falk had bad eyesight and couldn't see the lines drawn on the floor.

I've only seen lines drawn on the floor in theatre plays with some sort of choreography, but perhaps they're more common than I'd thought.

What I'd like to ask is, has anyone heard this anecdote before? Is it true? Even if he only had one eye, I've never heard that Peter's eyesight was bad. And if he played basketball and baseball in high school, as it seems he did, he cannot have seen that badly.

Tell your coworkers that Columbo stoops pretty low to solve a mystery sometimes, but the only time he followed lines drawn on the floor is in A Deadly State of Mind, in which a blind witness helped get the murderer to place himself at the scene of the crime.

That's what I thought. I've read and seen so much about Columbo and Peter Falk that I thought I'd have known about that, had it been true. I'll let my coworkers know I've consulted the experts, though!

(Good pun about stooping. A pity it doesn't work in Spanish!)