Best of Peter Rhodes - Dec 25

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

HE STILL doesn't get it, does he? Tony Blair says he is popular overseas but unpopular in Britain because journalists "don't approach me in an objective way." Nothing to do with that nasty business in Iraq, then?

FUNNY thing, the human spine. You can spend all day lifting coal sacks or chopping logs and your back will cope magnificently. And then you just turn slightly to pick up a bag of crisps and there's a horrible crunch and you have to lie down for a day. A friend just back from the States tells me that American chiropractors make so much money from this phenomenon that they have a name for it. The million-dollar turn.

WRONG kind of condensation? As six hugely sophisticated Eurostar trains broke down in quick succession in the Channel Tunnel, you couldn't help wondering why they don't keep a supply of old-fashioned, low-tech diesels, or even steam trains on standby. I bet Mallard (ask your grandfather) would have hurtled through that tunnel before you could say icicles.

THE really chilling thing about the weekend travel chaos was the shocking absence of help for those trapped, either in the Tunnel or on the motorways leading to Dover. Once upon a time, firefighters and TA units would have been on the scene with emergency lighting and tow chains. The WRVS would have been drafted in with hot tea and buns. Whatever happened to that sort of joined-up, mutually supportive system? We had it once, where has it gone? These days, when things go wrong, you are on your own. The most technically advanced railway system on earth breaks down and passengers are plunged straight into the Third World.

A READER tells me he has been diagnosed with budgie flu. It's like swine flu but tweetable.

ON THE very night that the Copenhagen summit secured its agreement on climate change, the outside tap at Chateau Rhodes froze, for the first time in 25 years. Global warming, presumably.

"SPONTANEOUS action" by music lovers is claimed to be behind the Christmas No 1 victory of Rage Against the Machine over X Factor winner Joe McElderry. What actually happened was that thousands of kids followed an internet campaign. They were spontaneous in much the way that sheep are spontaneous.

THE final instalment of A History of Scotland (BBC2) came close to being a one-hour party political broadcast for the Scottish National Party. Archeologist Neil Oliver left us in no doubt that Margaret Thatcher was a big baddie who closed down mines, while Scottish nationalism is the best thing since sliced haggis. Time will tell, laddie. Time will tell.

AN UNUSUAL case of variant CJD, the human form of mad-cow disease, reminds me of four little words from the 1990s. Eighteen years ago I interviewed Professor Richard Lacey, the government adviser on food safety who warned that if the disease could be passed from animals to humans we could "virtually lose a generation." To be fair, Lacey made it clear that this doomsday prediction was the absolute, worst-case scenario. He also said that, on the best prognosis, humans would simply not be affected by the disease. But it was those words "virtually lose a generation" which stuck in the mind. When the disease failed to appear, Lacey was roundly rubbished. Two decades on, about 200 cases of vCJD have been identified in the world, 170 of them in Britain. Significantly, all of the victims have had a similar genetic make-up. Until now. The recent death of a 30-year-old man from vCJD is a puzzle. The victim did not have the usual genetic pattern. This suggests that the disease may be taking many years to incubate and could yet do terrible things to this nation. For the record, Lacey told me that he expected BSE to appear from 1996 onward and to affect between 25,000 and 2.5 million Britons. Just a little something to worry about if you're getting bored with climate change.

MY PERSONAL view is that mad-cow disease is already with us. What else could account for so many people being so angry, so dim, so plain bonkers? I was waiting at a pelican crossing at the weekend. The lights turned red, the traffic stopped. But instead of crossing the road, a bonkers old bloke strode up to a startled driver, who had stopped perfectly properly, and began hurling abuse at her. More hamburgers, granddad?

AND could mad-cow disease be in any way connected with the "Idiot sightings" currently circulating on the internet? An example is the repair man who came to deal with a faulty electric-opening garage door. He announced that the problem was that the 1/2 horse-power motor was not powerful enough and should be replaced with a 1/4 hp motor.

"But a 1/2 hp motor is more powerful than a 1/4 hp" protested the householder.

"No," explained the expert. "Four is larger than two."

I WAS a little surprised, in these politically correct times, to hear a stand-up comedian on Live at the Apollo (Dave channel) use the expression: "Sweating like a Geordie in a maths test." Tut, tut.

"YES, I did because I got hit by snowballs." Policeman in Washington DC confirming he drew his pistol when revellers threw snowballs at his car. What a great country.

I CANNOT imagine why grumpy, robotic and sulk-prone Gordon Brown would agree to appear on television debates with those two young smoothies, David Cameron and Nick Clegg. Unless, of course, Brown knows damn well the debates will face a legal challenge from the Scottish National Party and be shelved. Cynical? Me?

I'M SORRY, I'll read that again. An economist on Radio 5 Live said that in order to help with cash flow, instead of getting a quarterly bill, shops should be able to pay their month rently.

THE Child Support Agency made headlines this week by forcing a father to hand over unpaid child support for the past 16 years - a record £70,000. In smaller print it was reported that debts uncollected by the CSA have now reached £3,800 million. In other words, the £70,000 duly collected from one persistent non-payer represents about £1 for every £54,000 waiting to be collected. After all these years, the odds are still stacked in favour of dads who do a runner.

AND finally, at the religious-knowledge examination:

"Christians have only one spouse. This is called monotony."