Best of Peter Rhodes - February 20

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

TWO television aerials met on a roof, fell in love and got married. The wedding ceremony wasn't much, but the reception was terrific.

SCIENTISTS have identified the DNA from Neanderthal man, who died out 30,000 years ago, and reckon they may soon be able to recreate the species. Neanderthals were short, hairy grunters with poor personal hygiene. They should fit in nicely.

OH, IT'S an airline, is it? I assumed the Virgin adverts, featuring a phalanx of red-suited come-hither blondes in scarlet stilettos, were for a strip joint. Still, it's good to know one airline employs sex symbols to serve the coffee. The only cabin staff I seem to encounter are raging queens, useless school leavers and bossy matrons.

GOOD old Lloyds. We taxpayers bung the bank £17,000 million in the hope that it will mend its ways and conduct itself in the national interest. And one of its first decisions after the loan is to refuse old soldiers of the Second World War a bank account. The D-Day veterans need somewhere to keep the money before their pilgrimage to Normandy this June. The bank says such an account would not be profitable. Black horse, black heart.

RESEARCHERS at Reading University are fitting 241 cats with micro-cameras to find out how many animals and birds they kill. Let us hope they have strong stomachs. Our adopted tabby has proudly presented us with three dead, half-eaten rabbits and spring has hardly begun. For the first time in years we will not be sharing our vegetable patch with the late Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail.

DIDN'T The Victorian Farm (BBC2) end beautifully? If this had been a reality show or a celebrity series, the participants would have collapsed in floods of tears at the end. There would have been embraces and kisses and the usual sick-making declarations of everlasting love. Instead, the presenters (Ruth Goodman, Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn), having poured their heart, soul and muscle into making this farm work for the past 12 months, quietly folded away their linen, bade farewell to the livestock and simply went home. The leave-taking of the show was low-keyed, dignified and a reminder of what England, and the English, used to be like.

WE ARE told the average Lloyds salary is £17,000 plus a £1,000 bonus. So why not simply pay them £18,000? Or is that too simple, honest and transparent to go with modern banking?

THERE are some parts of this country that no-one cares about. Taking the weatherman at his word, we set off for a day's sailing in Northamptonshire at the weekend. Somehow, the Met Office had overlooked the fact that while the rest of England was balmy, Northants was Switzerland. The snow lay deep, a blizzard was blowing and the lake was frozen rock-solid. You know, if this were Hyde Park someone would have mentioned it.

HAVING thoroughly mucked up our planet it is excellent news that, according to astronomer Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institute for Science, there may be 100 billion Earth-like planets in our own galaxy. The snag is in the timing. It has taken humans only about 250 years since the Industrial Revolution to achieve global-climate meltdown. If we built a spaceship and set off for the nearest Earth-like planet tomorrow, it would take us several thousand years to get there. By which time, the distant planet's equivalent of human beings could have thoroughly mucked-up that planet, too. So instead of arriving on a sweet and virgin Planet Zog, we might get there just as the Zoggians are clearing off, leaving humankind to take over a steaming, smoking mess.

I WROTE some time ago about the curious fact that if you put one horse in a field with one hole, the horse will eventually fall into the hole. It seems a similar rule of attraction applies to two submarines in the Atlantic Ocean.

WE HACKS may occasionally over-egg a story but we are not in the same league as the hysterical CND spokesman who described the Anglo-French submarine incident as a "nuclear nightmare of the highest order". Oh, please. Small bump, no-one hurt. Get a grip.

THE OLYMPICS Minister Tessa Jowell deserves the freestyle ducking medal for avoiding a very simple question on Channel 4 News. If David Cameron invited her to stay on in charge of the Games under a Tory government, would she? There was much harrumphing about "I am a Labour minister" but it sounded not unlike "yes".

IN THE the meantime, Jowell has called for women to compete in as many events as men. This could lead to female boxers and wrestlers being pounded to pulp by enormous, sweaty blokes. No-one ever said equality was going to be pretty.

LABOUR may well be creating a police state, as former MI5 boss Stella Rimmington alleges. The snag is that the very idea of traditional British liberties is passing out of our race memory. There was a time when the state served us, not the other way around. The gradual erosion of freedoms has been achieved under a smokescreen of fear. Unless the right to take photographs is curtailed, unless we all carry an ID card, unless nail clippers are confiscated from our luggage, unless every car journey is monitored and elderly hecklers are bundled out by bouncers, then al Qaeda will blow us all up. As there has been virtually no resistance to this process, we can only assume that Britons, once an intelligent and sceptical nation, actually believe this tosh. Once upon a time we admired our police as the best in the world. Today, if you dare to photograph one, you could be nicked. Dixon would be appalled.

MARKS & Spencer says of its new 75p jam sandwich: "One bite takes you straight back to your childhood."

It certainly does. In my childhood 75p was 15 shillings and we never dreamed we'd be rich enough to spend that much on a jam sarnie.

A SECRET document which has emerged after 60 years suggests that Hitler had bad table manners and terrible flatulence. Der Fuhrer in public, Der Fahrter in private.