I'm afraid it was the Ryder Cup-style photo that was the last straw. It is traditional, on the eve of that golf competition, for the US and European teams to pose for photos in matching outfits. Rarely has this biennial silliness been called to mind more sharply than on Wednesday in Tehran, when the 15 released naval hostages waved cheerily for the cameras, looking for all the world as if they were confident of securing an early lead in the foursomes.
Before we proceed, two things should be stated for the record. First, it is obviously wonderful that the crew are back in Blighty and reunited with their families. Second, I have never been held hostage or even boarded a ship to check that its cargo papers were in order. Nor have I played international football against Andorra. But we can none the less expect certain standards from those who volunteer to perform these various duties on our grateful behalf. Now that is out of the way, it seems reasonable to at least wonder whatever happened to only divulging one's name, rank and number.
Clearly that has been deemed a rather outmoded concept. According to the statements made by the crew's Captain Chris Air in yesterday afternoon's press conference, all the hostages arrived independently at the decision to cooperate fully with the Iranians, following several days of "mind games". They were then granted two hours of televised "socialising" a night, and eventually released. The world saw them thank their "fantastic" captors, and rifle through the goody bags provided by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in full view of the cameras - after they had been committed into British naval hands. No doubt they're all being talked up for VCs by the time you read this, but it would be a tall order to sell the saga as an unalloyed success.
Yet First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Jonathan Band insists the crew "acted with considerable dignity and a lot of courage," going on to say that "they appear to have played it by the rules". In which case, perhaps a review of the rules might be worth considering. Revolting as Ahmadinejad's exercise was, getting caught up in such a situation is a risk inherent in the type of work for which the navy personnel signed up. Many might disagree with Admiral Band that they did not put others in danger: what was there for all to see was the apparent ease with which British service men and women can be coopted as propaganda tools.
A contrast with the two RAF Tornado crewmen captured during the first Gulf war, and paraded silent and bloodied on Iraqi television, may be unfair. But in terms of reserve, it is slightly unfortunate when comparisons with five-year-old Stuart Lockwood - who shrank from Saddam's hand as the dictator ruffled his hair during the Kuwait hostage crisis - do not flatter these latterday detainees.
Appearance is crucial. So pliant did the 15 appear in their nightly media outings that it was not long before tactfully bemused commentators were raising the possibility of Stockholm syndrome, presumably casting Leading Seaman Faye Turney in the Patty Hearst role, with the iconic black beret replaced by a hijab in this version.
More worthy of serious consideration, though, is the fact that several former senior military figures have taken the step of speaking out against the charges of luminous heroism. "This situation looked like a bloody shambles," Lt General Sir Michael Gray told yesterday's Daily Mail. "It did not look good. The shambles also relates to how and why these people were picked up in the first place. The Royal Navy appears to have been inept - but that is another story."
I cannot be sure of the precise circumstances in which the former commander of the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment (1969-71) delivered these remarks, but I imagine Lt Gen Gray standing ramrod straight as he took the Mail's call at a small occasional table in his hall, before ringing off with a brisk "Good day to you." (Possibly even that was dispensed with. My grandfather never said hello or goodbye on the telephone because he believed it to be a device for passing information and nothing more.)
Perhaps those of us made uneasy by the spectacle of the past fortnight are just stupidly nostalgic for this kind of world - the old days when wars were waged against expansionist nations, as opposed to on an abstract noun. The days when hostage situations didn't share disturbing amounts of iconography with the Big Brother house, and captured personnel did not emerge asking for "space". Then again, as our leaders constantly remind us, we are fighting a new kind of enemy. Perhaps all this goes with the territory.
But there is a certain moment in life when those of us who consider ourselves conscientious objectors to just about everything but imported US TV dramas suddenly find ourselves a heartbeat away from ending a sentence with the words "and we'd all be speaking German now". For this armchair general hack, that moment was the Tehran Ryder Cup photo.
Marina Hyde