Best of Peter Rhodes - Feb 19

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

FOR no apparent reason, a reader recalls his favourite moment from a radio quiz:

Q. For £10, what is the nationality of the Pope?

A. I think I know that one. Is it Jewish?

YOU may recall I suggested some time ago that the £6.5 million EuroMillions winner Donna Rhodes might be a relative. Sadly, she has failed to bung me a cheque. Meanwhile, this week's £56 million winner is the Cirencester estate agent Justine Laycock. Unusual name. I wonder if she is in any way related to Bright Laycock of Cowling, Yorkshire. He was my great-grandfather. He died in 1965. I seem to recall that Bright's dying wish was that all his family, no matter how far-flung or unknown to each other, would share their wealth with each other. Wonderful chap, wonderful sentiment.

IT GOES without saying that in a perfect world, massive lottery wins wouldn't bring happiness. We losers could then have a good old guffaw as the super-winners spiralled down into bleak depression. Some of the papers are already pandering to this deep-seated envy. One tabloid this week produced a shrink who suggested that £800 worth of therapy produces as much happiness as a £25,000 jackpot. Nice try, Doc. However, in these EuroMillions times, £25,000 is very small beer. In a survey of 65 people who had won more than £1 million each, 70 per cent said they were happier and only two per cent were less happy. Money buys happiness - that's why we all want more. And if you seriously think £56 million would make you miserable, you really do need a shrink.

THE STRANGE case of the Telford MP David Wright gets curiouser and curiouser . He has apologised for the term "scum-sucking pig" on Twitter. He says "scum-sucking" was inserted into one of his genuine anti-Tory messages by a hacker. Mr Wright says he has asked Twitter to investigate. But why did Mr Wright feel the need to apologise for these words if they were not his? We can only hope that Twitter produces the answers. Meanwhile, the story has gone international. If you ever need to know, the German for "scum-sucking pig" is Dreck fressendes Schwein. What a great language.

THE EQUALITY and Human Rights Commission warns that the new full-body scanners at Heathrow and Manchester airports may be breaking discrimination law and breaching passengers' rights to privacy. But if scanning is unlawful, how can searching our luggage be lawful? It is deeply intrusive to have your knickers, pills and hot-water bottles fingered by some smirking security guard. Stand up, brothers and sisters, for the basic human right of no airport searches at all. We have nothing to lose but our, er, lives.

I RECENTLY asked what happened if you were using the toilet of a Virgin Pendolino train as it tilted on a bend. You may recall the learned response from an engineer who assured us blokes that our aim would not be affected. However, a shocking tale comes from a reader with a mild form of multiple sclerosis. She entered a Pendolino's disabled WC and used the floor button to lock the door which switches on a reassuring red light. "I settled down," she explains demurely, "and was otherwise engaged when the train went into a bend. As it tilted, the red light went out. Anyone could have entered the loo and, believe me, there is no way you can reach the button." After a few anxious minutes she re-emerged to overhear a pair of Virgin men discussing an electrical problem. Scary. I can only offer the old advice from privy days. Keep whistling.

CHANNEL 4's report on a mural by the secretive street artist Banksy featured his rewriting of the United States pledge: "One nation under God." For Banksy, the United Kingdom is "One nation under CCTV"

OUR changing language. A black Lib-Dem councillor in Bristol called an Asian Tory councillor a "coconut" and has been charged with racially aggravated harassment. She insists she used the term merely to suggest her colleague was "in denial of her roots" but the aggrieved Tory says she was deeply hurt. Her Conservative colleagues made an official complaint about this "outrageous racial metaphor". PC version of favourite old song: I've got a luvverly bunch of metaphors.

IN A rather unkind comment on his fellow humans, a contributor to the BBC Have Your Say website denounces the legal system and dreads appearing before a jury composed of "the type of pond life that's masquerading as human beings on Jeremy Kyle these days."

I have always taken the view that everyone on Jeremy Kyle comes from drama school. After 20 minutes of effing and blinding and accusing their wives of having babies with their brothers, I like to think they all retire to the green room for Campari and soda and a genteel little debrief:

"How was my Mancunian accent, dahling?"

"Simply superb, ducky. And my screeching Glaswegian harridan, it wasn't too OTT, was it?"

ONE of the theatre critics suggested this week that Dame Judi Dench playing the fairy queen Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream on her mid-70s might be "more grotesque than amusing". He then writes of her "conquering the years". Now, a prediction. Before long, expressing such views will be as unacceptable as asking whether a gay man could play football or a black woman should sit in the House of Lords. Ageism will be the next taboo. I rather look forward to becoming a protected species.

ARGENTINA is miffed about Britain drilling for oil around the Falkland Islands, which is understandable. It is hard-wired into every little Argie at birth that "Las Malvinas" belong to Argentina. The strange thing is how the usual suspects from 1982 are popping up again to accuse Britain of imperialism and demanding the island be ceded to Argentina. They like to create the impression that the island are just a few miles offshore, a sort of South American Isle of Wight. In fact, the Falklands are 300 miles from the Argentine coast , about as far as London is from Paris. We should be strong enough to insist that sovereignty is not up for debate - and big enough to invite Argentina to join us in boring for oil and to take a share in the profits. As Churchill didn't quite put it, bore-bore is better than war-war.

A READER wants to know why the plural of text is no longer texts but texties. Mind you, he does watch an awful lot of Trisha Goddard.