Best of Peter Rhodes - March 21
Here's a selection of the best of the Peter Rhodes column taken from the Express & Star for the week ending March 21.
Here's a selection of the best of the Peter Rhodes column taken from the Express & Star for the week ending March 21.
WHY do the words holiday, Easter, chaos and travel go so well together?
A READER in Dudley describes visiting a slimming club. The "chubby little woman" in charge was joined by a posse of hefty members and explained proudly how most of them had been coming for years. She handed the newcomer a diet sheet of recommended meals which, as the reader explains, is "far more than I eat now." Time to move on.
YET ANOTHER survey reveals a shocking level of ignorance about one of Britain's greatest figures. Given a choice of answers, one-third of schoolchildren thought Churchill was the first man on the moon. For goodness' sake, kids. As anyone knows - or ought to know - Churchill is a little dog who sells insurance.
ON THE fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, I would love to believe that the mayhem is fading and democracy and prosperity may be at hand. God knows, the Iraqis have suffered long enough. But in Baghdad the militias, true to Chairman Mao's rules of guerilla war ("when the enemy attacks, retreat") are lying low until the US "surge" troops are withdrawn. In Basra, the Brits are hunkered down at the airport and the city is run by thugs. The US/UK "War on Terror" has created far more terror than it has prevented and I see the River Tigris foaming with much blood for years to come. The moral? If a far-away country poses no threat to your territory, your interests or your citizens, do not invade it.
THE FOREIGN Office has issued new travel advice for over-55s who eat, drink, snorkel, water-ski and get up to all sorts of nonsense on overseas holidays. Why are these silver surfers so reckless? Probably because they see the pitiful pensions, third-rate cancer treatment and vile OAP homes awaiting them in the UK. When you've lived a full life how would you rather die, in a drunken pedalo disaster off a Greek island or in some urine-reeking care home in Ipswich? Pass the ouzo.
PAUL Newman, coolest movie star of the 1970s, is now 83 and in hospital being treated for hair loss and athlete's foot. I bet this makes lots of blokes feel better.
THE EUROPEAN Union? It is the finest damn organisation on God's earth. It makes Europe rich and peaceful. It is the epitome of democracy and transparency. It provides employment for such fine statesmen as Neil Kinnock and Peter Mandelson. It has a great flag and a wonderful theme tune. The EU? Gosh, I love it to bits.
* The EU has launched its European Parliament Prize for Journalism, worth 5,000 euros.
"OUR monarchy wouldn't be caught dead in a place like that," declares Amanda Platell, sneering at France's "vulgar" palace of Versailles. Has she ever seen Brighton Pavilion?
DRUNKOREXICS sound like monsters from Dr Who. In fact, the name has been coined to describe thin women who skip meals and get their calories from binge-drinking. I'm sure we used to call them good-time girls.
WHY IS it that every time Jesus pops up on the movies he is portrayed as the scruffiest git in Galilee? The Passion (BBC1) continues this tradition with Joseph Mawle looking like a raggle-taggle hippy. This may fit our modern idea of what a rebel should look like but the Jesus of the Bible was a respected teacher who preached in synagogues. If his clothes were filthy rags, why did the Roman soldiers at the Crucifixion bother to gamble for them? If he had long hair, why did his greatest publicist St Paul write (Corinthians 11): "If a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him."? A movie rethink of Jesus is long overdue.
HAD to smile at the spokesman for something called the Southern England Romany, Gypsy and Irish Traveller Network who has taken offence at a Basil Brush joke about a gipsy fortune teller. "Attitudes like this belong 20 or 30 years ago," says the spokesman. "We are supposed to have moved on." As he should know better than most, no-one ever moves on without a court order.
REJOICE. Soldiers have come first in a poll to decide the nation's heroes - and we journalists are third. Actually, it's not quite as good as its sounds. We hacks get only 34 per cent of the vote compared with 91per cent for soldiers. And in second place, between the squaddies and the reporters, is the group called "public service employees". This is a vast slice of humanity which includes every town-hall jobsworth, bloody-minded binman, narky poll-tax snooper and vicious traffic warden in the land. Politicians come eighth with just nine per cent of the votes. Damn lucky to get that.
SERIAL burglar Stuart McCormick, 29, has confessed in jail to 300 break-ins. He says he wants to give his victims that very modern commodity, "closure." Ah, bless. But here's a better idea. Tie McCormick to a stake in a field and let every one of those 300 victims kick him very hard up the backside. Closure should be on the victim's terms, not the villain's.
GOOD to see Harry Hill's brilliant TV Burp (ITV1) up for a Bafta along with the BBC's delightful costume drama, Cranford. But which is better, Dame Judi Dench in a bustle or a bespectacled bald bloke with a huge collar? There's only one way to find out - fight!
* 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.
