Best of Peter Rhodes - January 7

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

"I DON'T know what all the fuss is about. The roads are perfectly acceptable for any Third World country of our standing." Sky viewer on the potholes scandal.

A BUFFET, for heaven's sake? I know these are hard times and the forthcoming William 'n' Kate royal wedding is not intended to be over-lavish. But a buffet instead of a sit-down meal? What madness is this? The buffet is arguably the unpleasantest form of dining ever invented, bringing together all the worst aspects of English cuisine: the queue, the luke-warm food, the red-hot plate, the glass-balancing act and the where-the-hell-do-I-sit dilemma. It is bad enough to be subjected to a buffet when it's a £5.99 Sunday special at your local Chinese restaurant. Somehow, one expects better of Buckingham Palace.

AND if anyone seriously thinks a budget royal wedding will placate the unruly masses, consider this. The Charles and Di wedding of 1981 came at a time when the inner cities were ablaze. Rioters held the streets and the nation was deeply divided. Yet that super-lavish ceremony, a fairytale with no expense spared, made everyone feel a bit better and the route was packed with well-wishers. If you've got it, flaunt it. What is the point of rich people pretending to be poor?

"WE are three rottweilers," roared Gloria Hunniford, Angela Rippon and Jennie Bond when they launched their consumer programme Rip Off Britain (BBC1). This week's savaging was reserved for the postal gold-into-cash industry which, er, apparently doesn't always pay people very much for their gold. I have seen scarier hamsters.

ARTICLE 18 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights says: "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion."

Pakistan is a member of the UN. Yet its blasphemy laws say anyone defaming the name of Muhammed should be executed and anyone who "in any manner whatsoever" outrages the religious feelings of Muslims should be jailed for up to three years.

For seeking to reform the blasphemy laws, Salman Taseer the governor of Punjab was this week murdered by one of his own guards.

So is Pakistan in mourning for this campaigning liberal? Not exactly. A spokesman for mainstream Islam in Pakistan declared: "No Muslim should attend the funeral or even try to pray for Salman Taseer or even express any kind of regret or sympathy over the incident."

And they've got nuclear weapons.

YET more proof of Rhodes's Rooftop Theory on emails. This is the one that says if you would not stand on the roof of your office and yell something through a megaphone, then don't even think of putting it in an email. Sir Andrew Cahn, former head of a quango called UK Trade and Investment, told his staff to think up ways of spending Foreign Office money. Cahn wanted to protect the FO from the dreaded prospect of what he called an "underspend" and the rest of us call living within your means. Bizarrely, he put his idea in an email which, like all the juciest emails, found its way into the public domain. The incident is being brandished by critics as an example of all that's wrong in the quango culture. Remember - emails, like diamonds, are forever.

IF you're a bit out of your routine and suffering a post-yule bout of insomnia, I can thoroughly recommend the new series on the 17th century art movement, Baroque! (BBC4). I slept like a baby.

I WROTE recently about the Snowdrop pub in Lewes, named after the fatal avalanche of 1836. On the subject of whimsical names, a reader is reminded of the establishment which recently opened on the seafront in Southend-on-Sea, on the site of two old public lavatories. The Toulouse Restaurant.

IF we see someone breaking the law, shouldn't we try to stop them? Apparently not. Maurice Thompson, 64, flashed his headlamps to warn drivers of a police speed trap in Grimsby. He was charged with "wilfully obstructing a policeman in the execution of his duty" and fined £175 with £250 costs and a £15 victim surcharge. Makes you proud to be British, doesn't it?

NO, I don't understand it either. Queues built up at petrol stations on Monday to beat the midnight VAT and duty rises. But, even if you started with an empty tank, the average saving would be just £1.90. Would you join any queue for less than two quid? Me neither.

IF a boss sacked one of his workers simply to get some free publicity for his products, we would be horrified. But that's what happened when Radio 4 killed off Nigel Pargetter in The Archers this week to boost the New Year ratings. Actor Graham Seed has been deprived of his livelihood after 27 years of loyal service. An everyday story of hard-nosed bosses.

AN article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine claims that too many post-mortem examinations are carried out in Britain and the number could be cut by 80,000 a year. The problem is that, until you've carried out a PM, you never really know whether it was necessary or not. There was a PM after my father died following surgery. It revealed that he had been right all along in his belief that the cancer was in his kidney, while the surgeon had been treating him for bladder cancer. The surgeon said, with hindsight, he would have paid more attention to what my father was telling him. The examination also revealed that while Dad had smoked all his life and worked with asbestos as a plumber, his heart and lungs were in fine condition. This is the sort of PM that some experts deem unnecessary and yet it has always struck me as very worthwhile.

NINE shillings for a bag of Walker's crisps from a vending machine. For those of us who recall 25 per cent annual inflation in the 1970s, this is how it began. With a sharp intake of breath.