Here’s a selection of the best of the Peter Rhodes column taken from the Express & Star for the week ending January 25.

THE first two programmes in Grand Designs (C4) have proved an ancient law of building. The more convinced you are that your new, super-waterproofed cellar will keep dry, the wetter it gets.

TWENTY thousand cops on the streets of London. It was a stirring sight. But that massive swathe of officers was only about one-ninth of the 180,000 police currently serving the nation. So where are they all?

WHILE street protests go back to the days of the Jarrow Hunger March and the bread riots, you couldn’t help noticing that most of the officers protesting about their pay deal seemed (how can I put this sensitively?) in no imminent danger of starving to death.

SO THE school metal detector has been installed. It beeps a couple of times. Now, the dilemma for the security man. Do you a) confront Mental Billy, cocaine-fuelled leader of the racketeering gang known as the Year 12 Massive, and ask him to turn out his pockets? or b) kid yourself the detector has picked up something in the satchel of weedy, bespectacled Perkins of Year Seven and give him a damn good telling-off for bringing a stapler into school?

SO FAREWELL, Eddie “Bozo” Miller, the celebrated American glutton whose gut-stuffing life is a dreadful warning for today’s obese generation. Or possibly not. Bozo ate 27 chickens in a row for a bet. He claimed to have eaten 400 raviolis at a session. He often enjoyed a dozen Martinis before lunch. At the peak of his crazy-eating fame his weight fluctuated from 17 to 25 stone. The man hailed as “the world’s greatest trencherman” has died. He outlived his wife and one of his daughters. Bozo was 89.

“THERE is no black hole in the finances of the London 2012 Olympics,” declares Olympics minister Tessa Jowell. Of course not, chuck. And if there was, we could always top it up with the profits from Northern Rock.

INCIDENTALLY, how on earth did Hillary and Tenzing get all the way up Mount Everest without a hi-visibility yellow jacket between them?

Has this whetted your appetite for more of Peter’s gems? Make sure you read his column every day by picking up a copy of the Express & Star.