When Mary informs him of the paternity, he shrugs.And after a birth in which he's a klutzy, New Man participant, he punctures the sanctimony by admitting, palms upward, "I was hoping for a girl".The proceedings never begin to match the treatment of Joseph's predicament you find in the medieval mystery plays or, say, in Auden's brilliant Christmas oratorio For the Time Being, where the character's plight mirrors the poet's own confused feelings of betrayal by his lover.But, even in the latter half where your really begin to feel that this piece is hitching a shameless lift on the Christian story, there are moments that disconcert with their emotional directness. Apart from being the role in which many a short-trousered lad makes his stage debut, Joseph is also an archetype of the tragi-comic cuckold, cast in the role of unwitting gooseberry while the Holy Spirit has its (un)wicked way with the Virgin Mary. On a set that looks like the background to some "Wonders of Woodwork" CD-rom, Conti never manages to get especially agitated about this. Since then more than 2,000 DNA tests have been done.Police have also been searching for a French man who told tourists in the Republic of Ireland in July that he had fled his home country and could not return.Despite the failure to catch the man who killed his daughter, Caroline's father, John Dickinson, 42, said yesterday: "I am sure it will be through one of these new leads that there will be a major breakthrough."I do not have any negative criticisms to make about the police any more, the new team are doing a sterling job and are really determined to catch Caroline's killer.". CALL ME an old softy, corrupted by the Christmas spirit, but I didn't loathe every single second of Jesus, My Boy - a solo vehicle for Tom Conti, in which, with a grizzled beard, leather carpenter's apron and a lot of Semitic shrugging, he plays Jesus' sort-of dad.

DNA tests were ignored until too late because they were considered "too expensive", potentially vital witness statements were missed because they had not been translated into French, and door-to-door inquiries in and around Pleine Fougeres were barred for fear of "disturbing the local community".After complaints by Caroline's parents the investigating magistrate was replaced, in August last year, by judge Renaud Van Ruymbeck. Two days after the murder, the police arrested a man in connection with the killing. The investigating magistrate later declared the case closed, saying Patrice Pade, 41, had confessed.But DNA testing proved him innocent too and the French authorities were later forced to pay damages of Fr10,000 (about pounds 1,000) for false imprisonment.Over the next few months the murder hunt was dogged by a succession of blunders. Pierre Rabin, an undertaker in Calais, told police that the picture is similar to a customer who called in at his funeral parlour in the town in 1995, a year before Caroline's death.

He gave police a photocopy of the man's passport.Despite this possible sighting, the French investigation appears to be making slow progress. It was based on sightings of a man near the hostel.In a separate development, French police are still investigating a claim that an Englishman resembled the artist's impression of the suspected killer. The girl told police that a photofit of the suspect in the Caroline investigation bore a resemblance to the man who had raped her at knife-point in Nancy in May 1993.The rape victim described her attacker as a "caveman", with long dark hair covering his ears, a broad forehead, flat nose and bushy eyebrows.Caroline was raped and suffocated with a pillow on 18 July 1996 in the room she was sharing with four schoolfriends at a youth hostel in Pleine Fougeres in Brittany while on a trip from Launceston College in Cornwall.The possible link emerged after police investigating Caroline's murder issued a photofit of an unshaven, bushy-browed man with long, untidy hair. THE HUNT for the killer of Caroline Dickinson, the schoolgirl who was murdered in France more than two years ago, has suffered yet another setback after a DNA test cleared a suspect yesterday. The latest development adds to the growing number of false leads and blunders in an investigation that appears to be no nearer catching Caroline's killer, despite two separate inquiries by the French authorities over the past 29 months. Yesterday's disappointment involved a homeless man in his 30s who was arrested in Marseille on Wednesday after he was said to bear a resemblance to a photofit of the suspected killer reissued last month.But the French police announced yesterday that a DNA sample from the man had proved a negative match and that he had been released.He was arrested a week after it was revealed that detectives investigating 13-year-old Caroline's murder were examining possible links with the rape of a teenage girl in eastern France three years earlier. Assaults on rail staff rose from 267 to 335, which the executive said could be attributed, in part, to "rail rage".The main element of the proposed modification to the rolling stock is to add a device that prevents one train riding on top of the other in a collision by interlocking the trains together - known as "cup and cone".The executive has done a test involving a train hitting a stationary carriage at 35mph - a replica of the circumstances at Clapham on 12 December 1998, 10 years ago tomorrow.Frank Davies, chairman of the Health and Safety Commission, which advises the Government on policy, said: "This excellent crash test result should clear the way forward for the HSC to send a proposal for new regulations, which will deal with the future of Mark I rolling stock - and a train protection system - to ministers before Christmas."Vic Coleman, the Chief Inspector of Railways, added: "The cup and cone device offers a relatively inexpensive alternative to rebodying or replacement and would greatly reduce the number and severity of casualties in the event of a head-on collision.". Vandalism accounted for 59 per cent of all accidents, compared with 51 per cent the previous year.

But significant train accidents fell from 105 to 89, the lowest yet. In the 12 months to March two people fell from moving trains.The move came as the executive's annual report showed the number of people killed on the railways had almost doubled in the past year from 25 to 48. Replacement would be more expensive.However, train companies will be given more time to introduce central locking on the stock, known as slam-door, where each can be opened from the inside, even when the train is moving. If will then be laid before Parliament and, if no MP objects, become law. The executive said the modifications would cost pounds 10,000 per carriage, a total of pounds 200m. The recommendation from the Health and Safety Executive, which will order the removal of all Mark I stock by 2007, will be handed to the Government next week.