Best of Peter Rhodes - June 10

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

THE Archbishop of Canterbury says no-one voted for Coalition policies. A reader asks: "Who voted for the Archbishop?"

A READER tells me he went to the doctor with a curious condition. He finishes crossword puzzles far too quickly. The GP advised him not to get too down.

ENOUGH of this silliness. In the real world of hard news, James Sorby this week urged his fellow criminals: "Don't do it, honestly, it's so dangerous." He is referring to stealing cable. Sorby suffered a 21,000-volt shock while trying to nick cable from a sub station in Leeds. The shock was so violent that it blew part of his skull off ,exposing the tiny organ which passes for his brain. And yet the shock was not quite enough to improve his brain. Note that the reason he gives for not stealing cable in future is that it is dangerous. The fact that it is also criminal doesn't seem to register. Another few thousand volts, perhaps?

ACTUALLY, mere volts are not the best measure of the power of an electric current. Many years ago in school, our physics master was demonstrating a Van der Graaf generator which produces huge levels of static electricity. He had just cranked it up to 500,000 volts when the inquisitive young Rhodes leaned forward for a better look and took half a million volts across the spectacles. Doesn't half make your eyes water.

LITTLE by little, Angus Deayton, the one-time quizmaster on Have I Got News For You, is being rehabilitated at the BBC. He was sacked nine years ago for sniffing cocaine and being involved with a prostitute. But at 55 he is to star in a sitcom called Pram Face (BBC3). And why not? He has probably served his time in obscurity and there are some performers whose talents should not be hidden for ever. Which leads on to the ticklish issue of another fine actor and writer who became a pariah. This one vanished from public life after his 2007 jailing on charges of possessing child pornography. It was impossible to watch the recent Olympic satire Twenty Twelve without being reminded of the man who created the first spoof documentary with his character Roy Mallard in People Like Us (Radio4), arguably the funniest and most inept interviewer of all time. Chris Langham may have done bad things but who can deny that television and radio are poorer without him?

AFTER your wonderful memories of making coffee with boiling milk, more on the joys of post-war cuisine. A reader recalls: "There was the time in the 1950s when my mother bought a pack of tea bags, and then spent 10 minutes ripping them open and emptying the contents into the tea caddy."

TONY Blair, having brought peace to the Middle East, now lectures us, in the paperback version of his memoirs, on the need to ensure energy security in the 21st century. Lest we forget, in 2009, less than two years after Blair resigned as prime minister, the Labour government warned us that by 2017 there could be power cuts of around 3,000 megawatt hours per year - the equivalent of the whole of Nottingham being without electricity for a day. Great legacy, Tone.

MICHAEL Dean, a 59-year-old father of six from Essex, has just graduated from the Open University, 34 years after commencing his course. He got there by degrees.

IN THE past 12 months, according to figures released this week, Champagne sales in Britain have soared by 30 per cent. Not you? Me neither.

STRANGE letters from my pension company. The first, on April 17, informs me that something called the Standard Lifetime Allowance for the current tax year is £0. The second, a little over a month later, says this is an error and the allowance is actually £1.8 million. You can understand why so much money goes missing, can't you?

A 50-year-old angler at a lake near Newbury was beaten up by two men and robbed of £5,000 worth of equipment. Nothing can excuse robbery, but £5,000 worth of rods, floats, lures and lines, for heaven's sake? What was he thinking of?

Perhaps this was an example of PAPS, the Prince Andrew the Photographer Syndrome. You find it in every hobby from angling to windsurfing. The thought process goes something like: I do not take photos as good as Prince Andrew's. Prince Andrew has £50,000 worth of kit. Therefore, if I get £50,000 worth of kit, I will be as good a snapper as Prince Andrew.

And too late you discover that the real difference between you and Prince Andrew is that Prince Andrew has an armed bodyguard.

THE latest celebrity to put the twit in Twitter is Anthony Weiner, a Democrat politician in the States. He sent an image of his underpants to a woman, lied about it, confessed and it's all a bit of a mess. To make it worse, In the States a wiener is a small sausage and is used colloquially as, well, you can guess.

The equivalent on this side of the pond would involve a British politician called Mr Willie. We can but hope.

IF you want to generate debate, praise the Post Office. This week's paean of praise from one reader brings a seething riposte from another:

" I had a landmark birthday last month and actually received a card from Royal Mail. It invited me to call at the sorting office and pay them £1.12 for not delivering a birthday card from my brother."

Turns out the card was decorated with a shirt button which make it too thick - by 1mm - to be classed as a normal letter. Birthday boy calculates that just over 0.28 per cent of the card was "oversize" and. The total bill from the Post Office was £1.58 - more than the card was worth.

THE Howard League for Penal Reform claims that some prisoners prefer short jail terms to community sentences. Curious. My colleagues and I cannot recall a single case of a defendant punching the air with joy on being sent to jail.

RESEARCHERS at the University of Leicester have discovered that the favourite brand of trainer worn by burglars is Nike. Just do it over.

A READER writes to say he has changed the mattress on his bed for a trampoline. He loves it but apparently his wife hit the roof.