All credit to lodin for working on a subject that I just happened to be thinking about. I have quickly found that it is quite an old subject however - for example: Why breaking can() is acceptable and Class::AutoloadCAN.

Also I am actually none the wiser. The order is as follows:

1. If you stop using AUTOLOAD the Perl::Critic shuts up.
2. If you must use AUTOLOAD you generally have to overload 'can'. sub can {return 1;} seems to work for me.
3. Actually the above is wrong since 'can' is supposed to return a reference to the subroutine. But how do I do that when the subroutine is AUTOLOAD?
4. I see a lot of modules offering solutions but I don't feel inclined to trust them. I think I would rather write code that I understand and depends on modules that look plausible.

Edit: This seems to work.

# In class implementing AUTOLOAD for everything.
sub can {
  my $self = shift;
  my $method = shift;
  return sub {
      my $self = shift;
      ..........
      return ....;
  };
}

sub AUTOLOAD {
        my $self = shift;
        my @method = split /::/, $AUTOLOAD;
        my $param = pop @method;
        my $c = $self->can($param);
        return &$c($self);
}
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