Best of Peter Rhodes - April 30

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

I HAD a few minutes with the Prime Minister this week. True to form, he ignored the questions I asked and answered the ones he thought I should have asked. Our encounter took place in a factory, close to a big safety notice on a first-aid box mounted on the wall. It said: Eyewash.

INCIDENTALLY, there is a theory that Mr Brown made up his mind Gillian Duffy was a bigot because of the language he thought she had used. In fact, the blameless Rochdale pensioner referred to East Europeans "flocking." Brown thought he heard an altogether stronger word. It is only a theory.

NO, I don't understand this either. The SNP leader Alex Salmond fights the corner passionately for his beloved Scotland. Why don't we have an Alex Salmond for England?

AND talking of joined-up government . . .

A boy of two had his cheese sandwich confiscated at a nursery in Lancashire because it broke their rules on "healthy eating". Little Jack Ormisher burst into tears when his sandwich, which didn't contain any lettuce or tomato, was taken away. His mum Dorothy said: "It's absolutely pathetic."

Not only that, Dorothy, it's completely bonkers and at odds with the Government's own healthy-eating rules.

According to the Food Standards Agency: "Milk and dairy products such as cheese, yoghurt and fromage frais are great sources of protein and vitamins A and B12. They're also an important source of calcium, which helps to keep our bones strong."

As for bread, the FSA says: " Starchy foods such as bread, cereals, rice, pasta and potatoes are a really important part of a healthy diet."

Put cheese and bread together and what have you got? The "unhealthy" sandwich confiscated from a tearful little boy by a bunch of busybodies who ought to know better.

"YOU can't make a pig by running a sausage machine backwards." Solving the financial crisis, as explained by a City guru on Radio 5 Live.

A SPRY young reader of 91 suggests a collective noun for a group of police officers. A ploddle.

STEPHEN Hawking, the great physicist, says humans should avoid making contact with extra-terrestrial races. As he puts it: "If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans." Damn right. I do not often find myself in bed with great scientists but I once raised the same point when referring to the inscription on Voyager 1. This satellite has been winging its way into the unfathomable depths of space for the past 37 years. Without consulting the rest of us, Nasa inscribed a metal plate on Voyager with a diagram showing what human beings are and where we live. As far as the Earthlings were concerned, the inscription says: "Hi! We want to be friends." But to an alien eye, the panel may well suggest: "We live on the third planet from the sun. We have no feathers, scale or hair. We are, in fact, over-ready." Stephen Hawking issued his warning this week. I wrote mine in a column dated November 22, 1980. You don't need to be a professor to recognise the bleedin' obvious.

MARCELLO Menegatto has been elected king of the tiny mini-state of Seborga on the Italian Riviera. His formal title is His Tremendousness Marcello the First.

IF YOU ever need to know, the Latin motto of Seborga is Sub Umbra Sedi which translates as Sit in the Shade. My apologies, Your Tremendousness, but it is a bit of a tongue-twister for us Brits.

RUSSELL Crowe reportedly flew into a right old strop on the set of Gladiator. Among other things, according to a new book, the Australian actor resented having to deliver the line: "I will have my vengeance in this life or the next." I can't see why the prickly antipodean would consider this line beneath his dignity when he had already delivered the silliest military order in the entire history of movies: "On my command, unleash hell." Oh, please.

DID you spot that game-changing moment when Sky's Adam Boulton demanded straight answers from Lord Mandelson and Mandy could only snap and bluster? For one brief moment we saw the face of a man who knows he has lost the power to scare.

ALL fully paid-up members of the Birmingham Navy will applaud the unnamed sailor who bought a motor cruiser, put 20 litres in the tank and, with the aid of a road map, set off to sail from Gillingham to Southampton. His plan was simple; keep the land on the right. Unfortunately, as a lifeboat crew revealed yesterday, the sailor encountered the Isle of Sheppey and, keeping the land on his right, sailed round and round it until he ran out of fuel and had to be rescued. If he had only turned left out of Gillingham and first right he would have found his spiritual home. Barking Creek.

A READER sends me one of those strange-but-true snippets which cannot go unchallenged. He says: "If the population of China walked past you eight abreast, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction." Hang on. How does any reproduction happen if they are all supposed to be walking?

DEFINITIONS for our time. A Conference: The confusion of one man, multiplied by the number present.