Peter Rhodes: Defining hypocrisy

IN an interview to launch his memoirs, Ken Clarke, 76, reveals that he has not gone a day without a drink since leaving school. It was another Tory, Winston Churchill, who famously claimed: "I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me." Churchill made it to 90.

THE BBC's own rules are very clear on the use of the emotive words "child" and "children" in news reports. They read: "For the purposes of the Editorial Guidelines and unless stated otherwise, a child is someone under the age of 15 years." And yet those words are routinely used simply to make a political point. The young people at Calais desperate to get into Britain are endlessly referred to as "children" in BBC reports when most are clearly aged over 15. And in a weekend report from the Army Foundation College in Harrogate, the BBC reporter intoned solemnly that it is a place "where children aged 16 and 17 can join the military." Children? We can see where you're coming from, Auntie.

AND off to the lake where an old mate is planning to sell his boat. There was a bit of haggling with the potential purchaser and, at the time of writing, the deal seems to have reached that happy stage (not unknown in boat or car sales) where the buyer doesn't really want to buy and the seller doesn't really want to sell.

BUT it gave me a chance to stroll around the place. Boatyards are graveyards of dreams. While most of the boats are pretty and polished, about a quarter are green with algae and neglect. There is nothing like a shiny new dinghy for stirring magical dreams of Swallows and Amazons and making you reach for the cheque book. Then, a few months later, you discover that boating is not all about halcyon days spent skipping over the waves. Boating is also about wheel bearings, towing regulations, insurance cover, sailing-club duties ("Can I put you down for three days as car-park attendant?") and the endless hunt for crew among your mates who don't like you shouting at them.

THE end game is pitiful to behold. The boat is abandoned, the boatyard sends out the bills and the warning letters, but gets no response. And then comes the Sunday-morning cull I once witnessed when a JCB with a massive fork skewers a succession of shabby dinghies, smashes them up and piles their mangled carcasses into a skip. That's the last chapter, the one you'll never find in Swallows and Amazons.

BARONESS Chakrabarti opposes grammar schools but sends her son to a selective school. She denies being a hypocrite. From Merriam-Webster online dictionary: Hypocrite - "a person who claims or pretends to have certain beliefs about what is right but who behaves in a way that disagrees with those beliefs."

INTERVIEWED on Peston on Sunday (ITV) Chakrabarti posed this question about her kid's private schooling: "Does that make me a hypocrite, or does it make me someone who is trying to do their best, not just for my own family, but for other people's families too?" Both, probably.

WE are told that the baroness became emotional during this interview. So did we all, milady. So did we all.