The best of this week’s Peter Rhodes column from the Express & Star.

AND yet another exam howler:
Q. What did Genghis Khan and Mahatma Gandhi have in common?
A. Unusual names.

THE BBC Trust has rejected appeals for Thought for the Day to be opened to non-religious groups. Atheists argue that their views should be heard. Ah, but I dare say they already are. In my limited experience, just because someone is called Pastor or Reverend or even Bishop, it does not mean  that,  from time to time, they are not racked with doubt. If all the atheists and agnostics walked out of the Church  tomorrow, it would be a very lonely place.

HATS off to T Freeman and K Doyle who have registered to have a civil partnership ceremony in London. Snag is, it probably won’t happen, now that Freeman and Doyle have revealed themselves respectively as Tom and Katherine. They are a heterosexual couple but they don’t like the institution of marriage. If gays and lesbians are allowed civil partnerships, they say,  why not straights? Can’t argue with that.

A 20-year-old divorcee has been stoned to death for adultery.  On the same day as this happened in Somalia,  a young mother Geeta Aulakh, 28, was found dead with one hand cut off in a London street . An Asian “honour killing” is suspected.  And on Wednesday a court in Lancashire heard how a Muslim father  threatened to cut out his wife’s tongue and murder her when she dared obstruct an arranged marriage  When babbling feminists complain that Western culture oppresses women, think on this.

SIMON Cowell’s older sister June was a child star in the  1960  science-fiction film Village Of The Damned and was the only girl to get a speaking role. With all those Xmas quizzes looming, you never know when you might need trivia like this.

REVENGE is sweet. A reader writes: “I was delighted to hear that the Sugababes were unable to perform following the crowd surge at Birmingham Christmas Lights. It makes a change for them to be on the receiving end of a cancellation. In 2008 they were booked to headline Aberystwyth University May Ball. With just hours to go, their agent phoned to cancel as one of the girls had missed her flight from Dubai. The student room internet site revealed most students felt a £10 drinks voucher was a fair swap for the missing Babes.”

AND talking of booze, research in Spain suggests that drinking large amounts of alcohol every day cuts the risk of coronary disease in men. Which means your heart should be healthy enough to let you jog  to the liver clinic.

A COUPLE of 20-year-olds have been arrested on suspicion of trying to steal banking details. It works by infesting millions of computers with a bug which bypasses your security software, finds all your passwords and account details and sends them back to criminal gangs. I would not touch internet banking with a bargepole and I suspect the 21st century may see a revival of the ultimate, hacking-proof money-security device. It’s called a mattress.

Q. Where was Hadrian’s Wall built?
A. Around Hadrian’s garden

DOCTORS believe they have perfected a libido-increasing pill known as “Viagra for women.” And yet not everyone is impressed. Paula Hall of the charity Relate says: “It is not going to fix a broken relationship or help with looking after the kids or cleaning the house.”  Come off it. Most women see the connection between rampant  libido and getting someone to help with the housework. As a general rule in life, sex sirens do not do their own washing up.

HOW long can wildlife programmes such as Life (BBC1) survive?  No-one seriously believes that the film crew just happened to be on the scene as one Japanese red bug stole a berry off another, or as the black bear discovered the bees’ honey. All the best wildlife shots are staged for the camera. As I reported a couple of days ago, Whitehall is outlawing the ill-treatment of what it calls “mini-beasts” (worms, ants etc) by schoolchildren. So how long before some zealot takes Auntie Beeb to court for conspiracy to murder a grasshopper?

GALLOWAY Forest Park has been officially unveiled as the first Dark Sky Park in the UK. This is a good thing. If you have never seen the stars in all their unpolluted majesty you have missed one of life’s great free shows. I will never forget walking out of the Upland Goose hotel in the Falklands one night under a sky blazing with stars.  When you fancy you can almost touch Orion’s belt,  you suddenly  understand why ancient people took the heavens so seriously.

THE award for Galloway  Forest was made by something called the Dark Sky Association. It is almost impossible to speak this name without doing a Darth Vader impression.

“DID your Lord reply to your letter?”  As a born-again atheist I was a tad surprised to find this message waiting for me among the emails. The closest I ever got to writing to the Lord was my annual missive to Father Christmas which I abandoned in the 1950s on the grounds that it never worked. On closer inspection, this email was from the House of Lords. It is the computer-generated response you get  if you ask one of their Lordships a question. And, yes, milord did reply, which is more than can be said for Santa.