Peter Rhodes: Enough of the purple prose

I WROTE yesterday that I had no idea where the expression "right as ninepence" came from. By chance, I heard it a few days ago in that wonderful Royle Family spin-off, Early Doors (BBC, 2003) One of the joys of endless football and tennis on telly is that you get a chance to dust off some truly excellent old DVDs.

RESEARCHERS at Queen Mary University of London claim that goats are just as good at communicating with humans as dogs are. "Goats are the new dogs!" declared one headline. But we all know they aren't. For a start, dogs can be housetrained and do not eat your washing off the line. And while the university team reports that goats enjoy gazing at humans, returning a goat's gaze can be disconcerting. The pupil of a goat's eye has that rarest of things in nature, a straight line. Weird.

THE capitulation of Andrea Leadsom and the arrival of Theresa May in Number Ten spares us the prospect of leftish Tories and rightish Labour MPs forming a new party of the centre. It would not have been a thrilling event. Political movements of the far Left and Right will always have the best tub-thumping slogans. What sort of street chant would rally support for the centre ground of politics? All together: "What do we want? Moderation. When do we want it? Well, whenever it's convenient, really."

NOW the PM selection process is over, can we just tone things down a bit, reduce the headline sizes, ditch the blood-curdling metaphors and put away the purple prose? This, from The Guardian on Monday: "Leadsom was fresh meat in the Tories' orgy of political homicide." Oh, do get a grip.

HAVE you noticed that every time someone tells us that too few young people voted in the EU referendum, or that Brexiteers are now regretting their vote, or that a majority of Brits now want a second referendum, they are invariably relying on the findings of some new opinion poll. Surely the big lesson we all learned on June 23 is that opinion polls are rubbish.

BUT as I suggested on June 24, the chief joy of the referendum is that for years to come it will give half the UK population a chance to say to the other half: "We told you so." Referendum - the gift that keeps on giving.

I MENTIONED the invitation from my local surgery to have something called a Pneumococcal vaccination. Reading the small print, I find that if I decline it, I am supposed to sign a form to this effect, asking the GP to "amend my records accordingly." I wonder whether that was drafted by a doctor, a drug company or a lawyer.

WANDERING around a churchyard, I found the old gravestones of three men with heroic names. One was called Hannibal, the second had the middle names Raleigh and Gawain and the third was named after Lloyd George. I wrote some weeks ago about how kids were once named after great military victories. There was also a fashion for names of great leaders. My own great-grandfather rejoiced in the name of Bright Laycock, having been named after the famous Victorian reformer John Bright.

OBVIOUS question: how many parents would dream of naming their offspring after today's politicians? "Oi! Stop chucking stones, Farage!"