Best of Peter Rhodes - May 13

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

DEFINITION for our time. Those who campaign aggressively for breast-feeding (thus humiliating mums who use formula milk) are the Breastapo.

ANOTHER definition for our time, as the law is changed to allow police to issue instant fines. Careless driving = the act of overtaking a copper.

STEVEN Moffat, writer of Doctor Who, criticises people who leak details of future plots and declares: "You can't imagine how much I hate them." But how secret are Doctor Who plots? Ever since 1963 they have involved the Doctor and a succession of leggy birds encountering fairly unconvincing monsters and escaping in the nick of time. Again and again. Have I given away too much?

THURSDAY marked the 17th anniversary of the death of the Labour leader John Smith. The morning cleric on Radio 4 was singing his praises as though he were a saint. Some people believe Smith was the best prime minister Labour never had, a towering figure of compassion and integrity. I remember him somewhat differently. I interviewed John Smith twice and each time he lost his temper. On the second occasion, I asked a question about alleged corruption in his constituency. This is what I wrote back then:

"The effect of the question is like smacking John Smith in the face. The smile drops, the jaw hardens, the lips go thin. He says: 'If we're going to continue with this interview, we had better get the basis of it clearly understood. I think we had better put that off until we do,' he says, reaching for my tape-recorder."

I have never known a politician behave like that . Maybe he was under stress. Four months later the man who confidently assured me he would be the next prime minister collapsed and died.

I remember John Smith as the man who tried to switch off my tape-recorder.

IN BIRMINGHAM, I watched an old chap in shorts shiveringly steering his narrowboat under a rain-lashed bridge and witnessed another great oxymoron of our time: canal holiday.

A READER tells me he is not impressed with this week's report suggesting breast-fed babies grow into more contented children: "I bet all the Taliban were breast-fed."

THE Apprentice (BBC1) is as horribly compulsive as ever. It is a collection of hyper-inflated egos in search of adoration and some of the bilge they come out with is positively toe-curling ("Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footsteps on the moon" . . . . "I'm cold and hard - I am unstoppable.")

Can you do better? Think up some over-the-top sound-bites suitable for The Apprentice and I'll print the most cringe-making. I will do this because that is the kind of human being I am. . . .

UNDER proposals being discussed in Whitehall, the speed limit on motorways is to be raised to 80mph. No change there, then.

IN EARLIER times, Levi Bellfield would have been brought into the dock to plead not guilty to the murder of Milly Dowler and his barrister would have worked overtime to convince the jury his client was a fine, upstanding chap. The jurors might well have swallowed it. One or two might have noticed that Mr Bellfied arrived every day wearing the same suit in a shade of prison-grey, and that he seemed to know the coppers in court rather well. But not a single juror would guess that Mr Bellfield was already in prison for two earlier murders. That sort of information was concealed until the jury returned a guilty verdict. This week, in a most unusual move, the trial began with full disclosure of Bellfield's violent past. Maybe that's because any juror could go on the internet, Google the defendant's name and find: "Levi Bellfield (born 17 May 1968) is a British murderer. " In an internet age, the old courtroom game of hiding the defendant's past is no longer tenable. As I have argued for some years, full disclosure of all convictions at the start of the trial should be routine, especially if we believe in the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

FIFA officials stand accused of taking money in return for voting for Qatar to host the 2018 World Cup. Tut, tut. Mind you, the England 2018 campaign bought 24 designer handbags, each costing £230, for the wives of Fifa officials. What exactly is the problem, that Qatar bribed its way to World Cup success - or that England didn't bribe enough?

FOLLOWING the success of The Only Way is Essex (ITV2), a reader sends me a handy list of expressions from that county including:

* Alma chizzit : a request to find the cost of an item.

* Assband: unable to leave the house owing to disability.

* Cort a panda: a large hamburger.

* Paypa: publication such as the E&S.

THAT annual celebration of wonga, the Sunday Times Rich List, tells us the UK has more billionaires than ever before – and they're getting richer. Really? Remember 2008 when we all believed the banks had assets of countless billions? And then people started unwrapping some of the brown-paper parcels in the bank vaults. Far from containing gold they held big piles of dodo poo in the form of sub-prime mortgages to thousands of houses in the United States. Since then, we are assured, the bags of poo have been ruthlessly hunted down and eliminated. Does anyone really believe that? Ask yourself this simple question: if a shopkeeper slips you a dud £5 note in your change, do you a) honestly surrender it at the nearest police station, or b) pass it on to the next sucker? If all the billionaires in the world decided to turn all their "investments" into £1 coins, how many would discover they are sitting on enormous quantities of poo, still in the old brown-paper parcels but with shiny new labels? There is only so much money in the world and when we are suddenly told there's much more than anyone thought, just sniff the air and smell the dodo poo.