Best of Peter Rhodes - May 21

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

THE new London red buses are claimed to be very green. We colour-blind folk understand perfectly.

NO SURPRISES in this week's research from Harvard University suggesting that people who eat sausages or processed meat every day have a higher risk of heart attack and diabetes. Sausages and processed meat taste good and the golden rule of nutrition is that the better something tastes, the more harmful it is. Lentils, porridge, carrots and bloody broccoli taste awful. They are therefore good for you. Really healthy people are the ones who eat lentils, porridge, carrots and bloody broccoli and insist they are really yummy. These people produce industrial quantities of flatulence and have no friends. All you need to know about healthy eating in one paragraph.

A READER points out that in ye olden days when all wine bottles were sealed with corks, the cork sometimes reacted with the wine and spoiled it. You could then refuse the bottle at the table by explaining to the waiter: "It's corked." Now the delicate bit. Today, wine tends to come with screwtops. If there is a problem with the wine, is it socially acceptable to tell the waiter: "It's screwed"?

TWO 16-year-old scumbags who scrawled scummy slogans in Blackburn Cathedral dragged their scummy hides into the local magistrates' court where chairman of the bench Austin Molloy told them: "Normal people would consider you absolute scum." Which seems fair enough. However, the clerk of the court reprimanded Mr Molloy for calling the scum scum. She said such language was "totally inappropriate and unjust" and invited the scumbags' parents to make an official complaint. Mr Molloy has since been suspended as chairman. The scum doubtless left the court grinning. So that's another great victory for equality, justice and the abiding courtroom principle that criminals, no matter how scummy, must never be told what society really thinks of them. A few days after Mr Molloy was reprimanded came news of Judge Ian Trigger who, while sentencing a drug dealer, referred to Britain's "lax immigration policy." The judge has duly been censured by the Lord Chief Justice for "intervening in the political process". Get the message? There is freedom of speech in English courts - unless you happen to speak an inconvenient truth.

A COLLEAGUE accuses me of denouncing the McMafia of Scottish MPs during the Brown/Blair years but keeping silent on what he calls the Yorkie Boys of the new coalition Government. To be honest, I hadn't noticed that the the Cameron-Clegg Cabinet is the most northern for years. It is distinctly Yorkshire-heavy (Hague, Warsi, Pickles, Cable etc). This will, of course, bring fine old Yorkshire qualities to the business of government: common sense, sound economics, justice, wisdom, compassion but, above all, modesty.

SO FAREWELL, John Shepherd-Barron, inventor of the automated teller machine (ATM) cashpoint, who has died aged 84. Interestingly, the reason our cashpoint cards have a four-digit Pin security code is that Mr Shepherd-Barron's wife Caroline said she could only remember four figures. I don't get it. Ask any old soldier for his eight-digit service number and he'll rattle it off as easily today as he did 50 years ago. Mind you, having to recite it before they let you out of the CS gas chamber does seem to fix it in the mind (24369896, since you ask).

A READER who accidentally opened his newspaper at the wrong end writes to say how alarmed he is at the latest environmental news. He is worried that large canine predators appear to be giving up their traditional prey in favour of snacks which are popular with humans, especially Cockneys. What else would account for the headline: "Wolves closing in on Jelle deal"? I have taken this up with our sportsdesk. Apparently there are no jellied eels. Mr Jelle is a footballer and the deal involved Wolverhampton Wanderers.

THE above tale is a reminder that while lots of people are very interested in association football, an awful lot of us are not. World Cup? What World Cup?

ANOTHER reader rang gloomily to complain that nothing seemed to have changed much under the new Government. He was particularly miffed at a report about busybodies being able to enter our homes and check the temperature of our hot taps. I suggested that Messrs Cameron and Clegg had been in power for less than a fortnight and it was wrong to expect instant changes to the old jobsworth culture.

"They've had plenty time to start shooting a few of them," he growled.

I WISH David Miliband well as he contests the leadership of the Labour Party. Yes, I have mocked the Boy Miliband from time to time but in the last few months of NuLab, he seemed to grow in stature and become less geeky and more relaxed. His flirty relationship with Hillary Clinton was a priceless asset for any government. Maybe Cameron should have snapped him up.

MILIBAND should have a clear run. The competition is Balls.

HERE'S a nice theatrical touch. As work continues on the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon, the original teak stage floor from the 1932 building is being re-laid in the theatre entrance. So you will be able literally to tread the boards where Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Laurence Olivier, Antony Sher, Patrick Stewart, David Tennant and all the rest trod before.

MORE news on the unlikely dog-breeding front. Apparently the results of crossing a bulldog with a terrier have been terribull. I think that's enough of these.

YOU will have to manage without this column for the next couple of weeks. I am taking my first holiday for a long while and will be sailing on Loch Lomond, which is as close to heaven as a hack is likely to get. If my regular gang of emailers could restrain themselves for the next couple of weeks, it would be appreciated. Especially the three-a-day brigade. You know who you are.