Best of Peter Rhodes - January 28

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

IN an unguarded moment, President Sarkozy caused huge offence by suggesting that the French region of Alsace was in Germany. I was reminded of the time a French colleague introduced me to her family and began: "This is my grandmother. She is an Alsatian."

"THE real reason why he has been imprisoned today is because he has fought injustice and inequality with every beat of his heart," said Gail Sheridan after husband Tommy was jailed. Strange. On the charge sheet it said perjury.

THE Financial Times re-tells the old tale of the hard-up Irish village where everyone is in debt to each other. A rich German arrives at the local hotel and puts down a 100-euro note as a deposit on a room. The hotelier grabs the note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher. The butcher uses the note to pay his feed merchant who rushes to the pub and pays his bar bill. The publican slips the note to the local prostitute, for services previously enjoyed, and she rushes to the hotel to pay what she owes for room hire. As she puts the note on the counter, the German appears, says he's decided not to stay, picks up the note and leaves. And that's how a bail-out works.

SO farewell, the BBC World Service, or at least its broadcasts in Albanian, Macedonian, Portuguese for Africa, English for the Caribbean and Serbian, which are being axed. Weep not. The World Service is a hangover from the war years when occupied Europe tuned in secretly to the voice of honesty, democracy and truth. The world has moved on and it is no job of the British taxpayer to spread the BBC's political slant on events to the good people of Tirana, Skopje or Belgrade.

FROM Moscow comes news of a "black widow" suicide bomber who planned to attack Red Square on New Year's Eve using a bomb detonated by a mobile phone. It seems that some hours before the attack, while she was in a safe house, a friend decided to text her a Happy New Year greeting. Bang.

THE Andy Gray / female-linesperson saga is not over. The story has gone through the usual stages of disclosure, reaction and retaliation. Watch out next for the well-fancy-that moment. This happens when a bright young hack finds an unknown professor doing obscure research into the human brain who admits that, yes, there is a difference between male and female spatial awareness. The prof will be horrified the next morning to find his picture in the tabloids under the headline: "It's official - women can't understand the offside rule." He will protest that he said no such thing but it's too late. This one will run and run.

LORD Coe has denounced Spurs' plan to demolish most of the London Olympics stadium after the games and rebuild it as a football ground. Coe, head of the games organisers, says such a move would undermine Britain's promise to use the games to provide a permanent legacy for athletics.

Promise, dear boy?

What about the promise that the Olympics would cost Britain £2.4 billion - a sum mysteriously hiked to £9.3 billion within two years of "winning" the 2012 event?

All other promises pale into insignificance beside that ruinous pledge. After so much of our money has been thrown at this fatuous event, there is only one person who should be allowed to buy the stadium. The highest bidder.

ON the theme of the King's Speech and stutters in general, a reader recalls an aunt who bred boxer dogs in the 1950s. She had a ferocious stammer yet insisted on naming one of her prizewinning dogs Snowblast Sabre Flash. My reader recalls, as a lad, "cracking up" as Auntie talked proudly about her dog, at some length.

FORTY years ago, the United States banned the sale of haggis on the grounds that it contains animal lungs. Now the Scottish government is appealing for the ban to be overturned. Oddly, the Jocks decided the best way to promote the haggis was to invite US officials to visit Scotland to see for themselves. Oh, folly. There is an old saying: "The less the people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they sleep in the night."

I REFERRED a few days ago to the curious fact that scientists are now warning of global warming but 40 years ago were forecasting an ice age. Now comes proof that, the boffin-about-turn process can take much less time. Only 10 years ago the scientific consensus was that climate change would give Britain hot dry summers and mild wet winters. But this week Britain's National Oceanography Centre suggested we are in for "slightly cooler" winters and "slightly cooler and wetter summers". My scepticism warms. Slightly.

AN American journal entitled Emerging Infectious Diseases (aren't you just itching to read it?) warns that cats and dogs who sleep on their owners' beds may pass on animal-born nasties including parasites, meningitis and even bubonic plague.

They also nibble your HobNobs.