Best of Peter Rhodes - January 21

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

NEXT month sees the release of a movie based on Rosemary Sutcliff's novel about a Roman legion which mysteriously vanishes. The film will be known as The Eagle. The producers apparently wanted to use the full name of the book, The Eagle of the Ninth, but feared the Americans would assume it was about golf.

THE most heartening video of the week came from a court case involving a gang of thugs who pounced on a man in Manchester and beat him savagely. From the left of the image comes a women with shopping bags who wades into the fray, stands over the victim and protects him until the thugs run away. Inspirational? Maybe. But don't get carried away. On the very same day as this video was released, Wolverhampton Crown Court heard how an 85-year-old women who dared to call a thug "stupid" for attacking a phone box was battered to the ground and left with a broken nose, two black eyes, a gashed head and long-term damage to one hand. Remember, for every have-a-go hero there is a have-a-go hospital case.

AS regular readers will be aware, I fear for the future of the driver-education industry. Some nights I fear so much that I wake up and have a good laugh.

This £300-million-a-year industry has grown like a parasite on the back of the speed-camera culture which has criminalised millions of drivers over the past decade. Now the Government is pulling the financial plug on so-called safety partnerships. All over England, speed cameras are being withdrawn or mothballed.

What will become of those £70-a-time classes where drivers guilty of the heinous offence of hitting 34mph are lectured on the bleedin' obvious by an assortment of self-important "experts" recruited from driving schools?

I make this confident prediction. At present, you only get one chance to attend these lessons as an alternative to a fine. Before long, expect the rules to be mysteriously changed to offer a second or third lesson - at an enhanced fee, naturally.

A NATION mourns. Katie Price has announced the end of her marriage to Alex Reid. She tells her fans: " Our difficulties were not helped by Alex becoming more fascinated by life in the media eye. Obviously, I cannot be critical of someone wanting to do this."

Obviously. Another boob job, dearie?

IF YOU are ever caught in a bomb incident and are wondering where all the cops are, the 7/7 inquest may offer a clue. It heard this week how the nearest British Transport Police station went into "lock down" after the bus explosion, meaning no officers were allowed to go to the scene. The cops who helped in the Blitz must be turning in their graves.

DEFINITION for our age. Lunatic: wristwatch designed for astronauts.

ON the day that the Christian couple Peter and Hazelmary Bull, were ordered to pay compensation for unlawfully discriminating against a gay couple at their Cornish hotel, I Googled "exclusively gay hotels" in London. There are 35,400 entries for establishments which effectively boast of discriminating against straight people. Plenty of work for the Equality and Human Rights Commission, eh?

If not, why not?

SO farewell, Frankie Boyle - possibly. It is rumoured that the foul-mouthed comedian's Channel 4 show, Tramadol Nights, may be axed. That's the way it has to be. There is absolutely no point in having edgy humour unless, from time to time, some performer falls off the edge.

DON'T be silly. Of course we can't read the transcripts of Tony Blair's conversations with George Bush which led to the Gulf War. What do you think this is, a free country?

PETE Postlethwaite: A Tribute (BBC2) reminded us not only of a great actor but of some of the great contradictions of life on the Left. Starring as the colliery-band conductor in Brassed Off, Postlethwaite became a fervent supporter of the miners and detested the Thatcher government for closing the pits. But as an eco-warrior he threatened to return his OBE if a later Labour government went ahead with plans for a coal-fired power station. Love the coal miners, hate the coal.

IT won't go away, will it, Tone? As the Iraq inquiry resumes, Blair is being recalled to explain certain inconsistencies in his evidence. The inquiry team has released a letter from the then Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, who says the former prime minister's public statements on the legality of the 2003 invasion were at odds with the legal advice Goldsmith had given him and made him "uncomfortable". That's a sensation Blair will doubtless experience when he faces the inquiry on Friday. Watch out for the sweat on the top lip.

TEMPTING-fate department. A reader asks: "Hasn't it gone quiet in Korea lately?"