Best of Peter Rhodes - August 27

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

HOW to become famous:

*18th century. Invent steam engine

* 19th century. Explore Africa

* 20th century. Start war

* 21st century. Put cat in wheelie bin

ARCHEOLOGISTS in York have dug up a Roman sandal containing the remains of a woolly sock. What have the Romans ever done for us? They gave us style.

"IF you cannot get out of your house, you've got to find some way to keep yourself occupied." Midwife Joy Horner explaining why Britain is expecting a baby boom nine months after the worst winter for 30 years. Oh, the romance.

EVERY day seems to bring news of some amazing medical breakthrough that will help us live for ever. But yesterday must have set some sort of record with three such claims:

* A drug that can help us grow a spare liver

* A new pill to beat skin cancer

* A breakthrough in "biosynthetic" corneas.

Whenever I read of such breakthroughs I wonder how many of them will ever become successful treatments.

And I am reminded of the widow whose husband suffered from a progressive disease for 20 years before it killed him. She told me that for all of those 20 years he had been on the same tablets.

"I LOVED the way all the actresses smelt. I didn't realise until years after that it was gin." Rhys Ifans describing his early days as a stagehand in The Funniest Things You Never Said 2 (Ebury Press).

YOU can often judge people by the way they treat their juniors. By that simple yardstick, what a vile bunch of self-important bounders some of our Members of Parliament are.

After the expenses scandal you might expect them to be a little chastened, a tad remorseful, just a wee bit subdued.

Not a chance. When they met staff from Ipsa, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, a number of MPs let rip. Ten incidents of alleged bullying reveal one Ipsa volunteer reduced to tears, an MP complaining that Ipsa staff were ****ing idiots and a female MP declaring: "I'm going to ****ing murder someone. One MP snatched off a worker's name badge.

All of the above would be par for the course in that savage political comedy, The Thick of It. But to hear of bullying going on in real life at Westminster is simply depressing. Have this shower learned nothing?

IT is sad to see political ambition tearing the Milibrand brothers apart. But the saddest thing is this week's revelation that their own mother, Marion Tozak, will not vote for either of them to become Labour leader. She is supporting Diane Abbott. That's Mum off the Christmas card list.

USING digital technology, Ordnance Survey has finally found the exact geographical location of the Go square on the Monopoly board. It is right next to the London Eye. So where do we collect our £200?

IN THE online debate about Gill Bowie, the nurse who was asked to pay £730 by Flybe to fly a suitcase from Jersey to Scotland, one little dictator (anonymous, as always) thunders: " Read the guidelines before you fly. Fed up with people whining about budget airlines when the terms and conditions are there in black and white."

Oh, your time will come, sonny. Come the revolution, we will have to devise an exquisitely painful punishment for the "terms and conditions" fascists.

I am sure you have encountered them. They are the wage-slaves who wrap themselves so closely in their company's viperish ethics that they lose all sense of common humanity and become little more than buffers to deflect criticism. The moment you complain, they begin a triumphant chorus of "Did you read the terms and conditions?" knowing full well that no-one ever does.

So let me spell it out. The terms and conditions for the revolution are that anyone who has ever demanded of a fellow citizen: "Did you read the terms and conditions?" will be chucked on a very large bonfire made of millions of terms and conditions. And if they complain as the flames lick about their nethers, the rest of us will gleefully chant: "Did you read the terms and conditions?"

RUN that past me again. A reader takes me to task for not being enthusiastic about the proposed high-speed rail link between London and Brum. His argument is that other countries have such things and, without one, Britain will be "a backwater". No, Britain will merely be different. France, Germany and Japan will have screaming 250mph behemoths. We will have Saxon meadows, Norman churches and a little peace and quiet.

SCIENTISTS have announced the discovery of a solar system 127 light years away. Have you noticed how all the big telescopes looking for intelligent life are pointed away from Earth?

I REFERRED recently to digital television signals breaking up in heavy rain. A reader reminds me that the same thing can happen with digital radio. Far more reliable was the crystal set he built 50 years ago from bits and pieces in an army-surplus shop. The kit came with the instructions: "Put 250 turns of wire on a cotton reel for the Light Programme, you can almost pick it up on a piece of wet string." Those were the days.

AND yet another reader shares my loathing of the nasty, narrow spare wheels fitted to modern cars. His two-seater Z3 BMW had a flat and, once he had fitted the skinny spare, he found there was no room in the boot for the damaged tyre. As he took the tyre away to be repaired, "poor Granny had to be left at the roadside."

There are two lessons from this:

a) Progress sometimes makes things worse.

b) Never leave your granny with a BMW driver.

"WE do not condone these activities," Auntie Beeb says sternly after yobs turned a three-wheel Reliant car on its side. Oh, please. You not only condone such activities, Auntie, you arrange them repeatedly for our entertainment. The recent fad for trashing Reliants is the direct result of Jeremy Clarkson deliberately turning a Reliant over as he drove it on Top Gear. Clarkson is a brilliant broadcaster and he writes like an angel but he is also a role model for prats. The Reliant wrecked in this latest attack is owned by a blameless Leicestershire pensioner, Barbara Wilkes. The least the BBC should do is bung her a cheque for the full value of the vehicle. Fifty quid should do it.

OUR changing language. One of Auntie Beeb's finest reported yesterday on "the enormity" of the Pakistan floods. Enormity means a great wickedness. It has nothing to do with size.

MY new dentist, who looks about 14, remarked (as I winced like a baby throughout this week's painless filling) that older patients tend to be the more nervous ones. I explained it's because we have memories of drillings without anaesthetics in the 1950s. There is a one-word cure for those who blather on about how wonderful the good old days were. Dentistry