Best of Peter Rhodes - December 10

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

A READER originally from London's East End tells me he watched the Christmas TV advert for the Ralph Lauren "Big Pony Collection" in sheer disbelief. For anyone with a passing knowledge of rhyming Cockney slang, the last thing you'd want to associate with an expensive perfume is a pony ("pony and trap"). Apparently, the adverts are all produced in New York. That figures.

AH, the charming street cries of a traditional Christmas market. I heard this, from one noisy trader: "Well, I ain't ****ing coming back here after Christmas."

And I won't be ****ing patronising your stall, you loud-mouthed oaf.

WATCHING one of the market patter merchants in full spate, it is remarkable how many people think that what they have bought with their £10 is a bag containing £130 worth of goodies. I fear there is more than one born every minute.

A TEACHER in Suffolk has been suspended for using "inappropriate force" on a child. The force in question was grabbing the primary-schoolboy by the wrist. A reader in his 80s says he despairs. He remembers the days when "inappropriate force" was the regular beatings meted out by a sadistic teacher with a heavy ruler. It was 1937 and my reader, then 14, tells me he celebrated his last day at school by getting even.

"I clenched my fist around six old pennies and punched him as hard as I could in the solar plexus. He collapsed and rolled on the floor. I went straight to the headmaster and said, 'Sir, I have just punched Mr Evans for all the bullying.' The Head thought for a moment and said, 'Thank you for informing me that the teacher has just fallen over a step'. How things change."

ONE of the tabloids, in the wake of the Sharm el-Sheikh shark attack, gets hysterical over whether man-eaters may soon be patrolling off English beaches. Frankly, when you've just shovelled three inches of snow off the drive, it is hard to remember what a summer is, let alone worry about what may be in the water.

I DO not understand this stuff but a reader assures me that the earliest sunset actually happens some time before the December 21 winter solstice. On Wednesday this week sunset at his home was 3.55pm. The charts say it will not get any earlier and by December 18 it will fall one minute later, at 3.56. The year is turning. Rejoice. From now on the sun will be with us for a little longer every day, all the way to summer. And then the sharks get you.

IT'S official. There is no law forbidding parents from taking photographs of their children in nativity plays. The Information Commissioner Christopher Graham solemnly declared this week that such photos do not breach the Data Protection Act. There is, however, a big gap between what the law says and what a copper on the scene thinks. If a headteacher bans photographs and you insist on standing up for your legal rights, do not expect Her Majesty's finest to support you. Lee Ingram turned up with a camera at his daughter's school play in Leicestershire. Three police officers attended and warned him that if he tried to take any pictures he'd be arrested for a breach of the peace.

SIX elderly, respectable and utterly blameless female flower arrangers at Gloucester Cathedral have resigned rather than undergo the nonsense of criminal-records checks. Quick as a flash this barbed little note popped up on a local website: "Quite right, too. Those choirboys should be left untouched for the clergy's use."

A READER tells me a German woman has started work on the checkout at his local supermarket. She is known to the regulars as a Hun at the till.

SENIOR US figures say the Wikileaks boss Julian Assange should be jailed or even executed for the alleged harm he has done. The only snag is that no-one seems to know, in the land of a free Press, which US law he is supposed to have broken. Undeterred, some of America's political leaders have suggested simply kidnapping Assange to the States or even "taking him out". Scary people.

AFTER being voted off Strictly Come Dancing, Ann Widdecombe says she may be remembered not as a politician but as "a dancing banana." More of a pumpkin, to be frank. Talking of which,

one of the TV sales channels was flogging frocks for fat lasses this week. Clearly "frocks for fat lasses" is not a great slogan. Each item was therefore delivered with the sugary sales pitch: "It deserves a curve."

GORDON Brown's book, Beyond the Crash, is launched this week. It runs to 315 pages but by all accounts the main theme can be summarised in a few words. It wasn't his fault. None of it.

A READER tells how he heard a doctor on the radio claiming that the secret to inner peace is simply to finish all the things you have started. He takes up the story: "I looked around my house to see things I'd started and hadn't finished. I found an unfinished bottle of Merlot, another of Chardonnay, half a bottle of Baileys, ditto rum, an unfinished box of chocolates and a couple of Prozac and Valium tablets. That doctor was right. I feel great."