Best of Peter Rhodes - Sept 25

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

THE ECONOMIST magazine reports a fashion show in multi-racial Antwerp where girls were invited to wear Muslim headscarves or not. One girl turned up wearing half a headscarf "to symbolise indecision."

IT IS reported that a short fortune-teller has escaped from prison. Police say they are hunting a small medium at large.

WAS anyone surprised that it took the jury just 45 minutes to acquit the so-called Columbine conspirators? Matthew Swift, 18, and Ross McKnight, 16, were accused of planning to murder teachers and pupils at a school in Greater Manchester. Yet the moment we heard they had no guns, no bullets, no explosives and barely a brain between them, anyone with an ounce of common sense could see this was just two immature kids talking big. Sadly, common sense is not so common in the upper echelons of our legal system. The moment I heard of this case I was reminded of the episode in Three Men in a Boat, published in 1889, when the author, Jerome K Jerome, rages against landowners who put up boards closing off backwaters of the river: "I feel I want to tear each one down, and hammer it over the head of the man who put it up, until I have killed him, and then I would bury him, and put the board up over the grave as a tombstone." Jerome's pal, Harris, goes further: "He said he not only felt he wanted to kill the man who caused the board to be put up, but that he should like to slaughter the whole of his family and all his friends and relations, and then burn down his house. This seemed to me to be going too far, and I said so to Harris; but he answered: "Not a bit of it. Serve 'em all jolly well right, and I'd go and sing comic songs on the ruins."

If you think this is a humorous tale of two young men trying to outdo each other, you are part of the wise majority. If you believe Harris and Jerome were seriously conspiring to commit mass murder, I suggest you apply for a job with the Crown Prosecution Service.

KILLER question put to the Lib Dem Conference this week by American professor Larry Sherman: "If this is such a reasonable party, why can't you get into power?"

AND beware the Lib-Dem plan to lift the income-tax threshold to £10,000 and pay for it by imposing an annual levy on houses worth more than £1 million. Once this recession is over and inflation lets rip, we could all be living in £1 million houses.

THERE is no fool like an old fool. The 83-year-old former president of France, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, has written a romantic novel based on an affair between a thinly-disguised Princess Diana and , er, a French president. Sadly, he gives the Diana character the hilariously unlikely moniker of Princess Patricia of Cardiff. This instantly reduces her to the improbability level of Archduke Wayne of Hendon or Nigel, Grand Vizier of Wem.

ONE of the oddities in the most politically-correct land on earth is that the football club of America's capital is still known as the Washington Redskins. A group of Native Americans is now taking the case to the Supreme Court, claiming the name is offensive. That's how it is with Native Americans. Sometimes they sioux.

THE longer you live, the more you realise that news, like cucumber, repeats. This week, researchers at Imperial College, London, report that hospital deaths increase during the first week in August with the new influx of junior doctors. I first heard this at least 40 years ago. "Don't get sick in August" is a wise old mantra. Heed it if you can.

CANTEEN staff at Flintshire Council recently decided that Spotted Dick should be referred to as Spotted Richard after "immature comments" by some customers. Now, following a flurry of complaints, councillors have told the staff to reinstate the traditional name. Not before time. For if Dick causes amusement, Richard is no better. In Cockney rhyming slang, Richard the Third is, well, you can probably guess.

MORE signs (allegedly) seen in hotels:

* In Croatia – The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the maid

* In Japan – You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid

I MAY criticise the BBC from time to time but Lost Land of the Volcano (BBC1) made me proud to be a licence payer. This was Auntie Beeb doing what she does best, sending fine young chaps up the jungle in New Guinea to explore the fauna in the finest Attenborough tradition. It was all terribly British and enthusiastic as the lads picked leeches off their flesh and introduced us to the biggest rat in the world. Ratty, never having met humans before, seemed quite happy to have his ears tickled by these genial big creatures with two legs. He will learn.

I FOUND myself idly wondering if the Beeb could arrange a swap with New Guinea. We get the amiable rat. They get Jonathan Ross.