Best of Peter Rhodes - August 29
Here's a selection of the best of the Peter Rhodes column taken from the Express & Star for the week ending August 29.
Here's a selection of the best of the Peter Rhodes column taken from the Express & Star for the week ending August 29.
ENID Blyton's child heroes the Famous Five are coming back in a brand new yarn for the 21st Century. Five Discover George is a Girl?
THE WRITTEN script of Gordon Brown's speech to troops in Afghanistan refers to Montgomery and the "battle of Allemagne". The overpaid ignoramus who wrote this should be ordered to bend over in Whitehall while the dwindling band of survivors of El Alamein kick him hard up the backside.
THE WHEELIE bin saga takes a sinister new turn. In Essex some folk living in cul-de-sacs have been ordered to trundle their bins to the main road for collection. Spare a thought for the poor devil at the end of the close whose outlook, one day a week, will be a festering mass of 10 or 20 wheelie-bins. What happens to the market value of his home? A councillor says: "I'm sure residents can appreciate the time that is lost when collecting from cul-de-sacs across the district." Bunkum. If the profit-hunting bin companies want to turn every collection into a race, that is their business. But why should the residents be expected to join in?
MADONNA at 50 spreads her fishnet-clad legs wide on stage at Cardiff and the nation is united in a single thought: Ye gods, Madge, isn't it time to consider a twin-set?
A READER and his wife approaching their golden wedding say the secret of a long and happy marriage is never to sleep on a disagreement. He says: "We always make up before we go to bed. That way we can start every day with a new argument."
A BBC website invites viewers to submit misunderstood song lyrics. One of the commonest is Celine Dion's anthem from Titanic which contains the line: " I believe that the heart does go on."
Or if you belong to a confused minority: "I believe that the hot dogs go on."
"THE COMPETITIVE spirit is essential," declares Gordon Brown, calling for the Olympic ethos in British schools. Dangerous territory, Prime Minister. Sport is all about selecting the best, taking them into an elite environment and hot-housing them for victory. Does he really want that sort of thinking in state comprehensives? Someone might ask if competition and selection are so good in sport, why not in education, too? And that would never do.
OVER the past 30 years so much has changed - the commercial culture, relationships between men and women in the workplace, transport, bosses, tea trolleys, marriage, politics, mother-in-law jokes. The BBC is planning to revive the 1970s hit, Reginald Perrin. Don't do it, Auntie. I didn't get where I am today by not spotting turkeys.
NO SOONER had a memory stick containing 80,000 prisoners' details gone missing than politicians were suggesting the inmates might get compensation. A reader tells me his personal details have gone astray in two computer cock-ups, one by his local doctor, the other by the Government. He says: "No-one has offered me any compensation. Do I have to be in jail first?"
MY CONTINUING research into the fancy-dress industry reveals that the convict costume is listed under "Occupations."
THE WORLD Cancer Research Fund says the traditional British breakfast of eggs, fried bread, bacon, black pudding and sausages is a cancer risk. And you thought it was health food . . . ?
AFTER his 16-year-old son is killed in a racist attack in Hastings, the father in Qatar says: "Justice has to be done." Sorry, but this is Britain. We don't do justice any more.
TALKING of the briny, yachtsman Stuart Wallace told this week how his boat sprang a leak in a Devon river. He plugged his finger in the finger-sized hole and waited patiently until the lifeboat came. But what if the hole had been just too big for a finger? Do not even think about it. Shame on you.
THE CONDITION wet age-related macular degeneration strikes 26,000 new victims each year and can cause blindness within three months. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has taken 30 months to decide that the sight-saving drug Lucentis should be paid for by the NHS. Before NICE saw the light, how many people stopped seeing it? WHAT is it with the boy Milliband? Why won't he stay at home and wash his bike or clean his room? Ever since they made him Foreign Secretary he seems to be on a one-boy mission to pick a fight with Russia in its own back yard. He should have stayed in Britain and been given some extra homework. History might be useful.
DUMB, dumber and even dumber, the three white-supremacists accused of plotting to assassinate Barack Obama are a sorry-looking bunch of lowbrow losers. Why is the Master Race always so disappointing?
ONE of the 10 coastal sites which may be surrendered to rising sea levels is a nightmare for news readers in a hurry. It is an area in Norfolk of "shingle spit and marshes." I'm sorry, I'll read that again . . .
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