Best of Peter Rhodes - July 22

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

POLICE Review magazine carries a report suggesting that when police are "caught short" after long periods on duty, they may become short-tempered and uncivil. I suppose it is some comfort to know, as the copper is calling you "sunshine" and whacking you with a baton, it's only because he wants a pee.

ITV3 is repeating the 1970s sitcom George & Mildred. This week, their house was about to be demolished and Mildred (Yootha Joyce) urged George (Brian Murphy): "We can't just sit here like King Canute."

George replied: "I can't see what burning the cakes has to do with it."

Pause and consider this. Back in 1976, everyone got the joke. Dim old George was confusing King Canute, who ordered the waves to retreat, with King Alfred, the ruler of Wessex who allowed the peasant woman's cakes to burn.

These historical legends were taught in schools, repeated in picture books and hard-wired into our national pool of knowledge. Today they are not and no scriptwriter would use the gag because we are too ignorant to get it.

If you doubt that, remember that the winner of this year's The Apprentice seriously believed that Christopher Columbus was not only an Englishman but was the chap who discovered the potato.

Little by little, we are turning into a nation which passes more exams than ever but actually knows very little about anything.

THE BBC has released footage from cat-nav, a tiny camera fitted to a moggie's neck. The result is hours of fairly pointless wandering. The only memorable moment is when the cat stops for a drink. What a shame they didn't fit this micro-camera to our tabby. The result would have been an X-rated gore-fest involving the dismemberment of small rabbits and the thoughtful laying-out of their giblets on our doorstep, presumably as some sort of gift. The good thing about farm cats at this time of year is that they don't cost much to feed. Meanwhile, let's hope no-one comes up with dog-nav cameras. Dogs spend most of their time examining other dogs' bottoms. Not exactly family viewing, is it?

OSCAR Pistorius has qualified for London 2012 as the first amputee sprinter in Olympic history.

The 24-year-old, who runs on blades, was born with missing bones and had his legs amputated in infancy. No-one denies that he is a great bloke and an inspiration.

But this debate is all about technology. If Pistorius' blades were made of wood, he might struggle even to jog. But his Cheetah Flex-Foot devices are manufactured from £15,000 worth of strong, springy hi-tech carbon fibre and he flies along. Today, he can outrun an Olympic sprinter. Tomorrow, a racehorse?

You can understand why some athletes are worried. As Britain's Roger Black puts it: "We don't know if Oscar is an amazing athlete, or a very good athlete with an advantage."

As technology gets better, how many more amputees might qualify for the Olympics?

Imagine the atmosphere in the changing rooms as able-bodied athletes pull on their running shoes while their opponents are strapping on the last word in bladerunner technology. Hardly a level playing field, is it?

In qualifying for the Olympics, Oscar Pistorius has opened the way for other disabled athletes. He has also opened a can of worms.

I SUSPECT Pistorius may be the human of the future. As any surgeon will tell you, knee joints are nothing but trouble. The time may come when Homo sapiens surgically casts off his prehistoric lower limbs and emerges from the operating theatre with yard-long blades. We will stand seven feet tall, run effortlessly at 30mph and wonder why our grandparents all owned cars.

GENETIC scientists in Canada have discovered that stick insects have lived for one million years without sex. But are they happy?

IT IS a curious fact of showbiz that the performers who seem the most relaxed and amusing are the ones infected with the most terrible nervousness, envy and self-doubt.

I refer, of course, to the comedians.

Michael McIntyre is a brilliant performer, drawing belly laughs out of subjects as bizarre as kitchen spice racks or the art of skipping.

But he is also extremely touchy and tells us he was deeply upset at the British Comedy Awards to be barracked and sniped at by other comedians.

Maybe he doesn't understand that those rubbishing him are less successful, riddled with jealousy, racked with insecurity and living in terror of that awful, inevitable moment when the punters no longer laugh.

If you want to see the real face of stand-up comedy, watch Mock the Week (BBC2) when the comedians stand on either side, leaping to the microphone when a joke suddenly occurs.

Don't watch the joke-teller. Watch the anxiety etched into the faces of the ones waiting for their turn, scared witless than the others will be funnier.

ANOTHER gem from the small adds: "Burial Plots x 2. Genuine reason, owner moving away."

A READER suggests I should be sacked for writing that phone hacking is "a relatively minor offence." It goes without saying that we are all revolted at the allegation that the News of the World hacked into murdered Milly Dowler's phone, giving her parents false hope that she was alive. But supposing the the NoW, or the Times or the Guardian, by the use of hacking, had uncovered and foiled a terrorist plot. Would we all be tut-tutting about the wickedness of phone-hacking? Of course not. We would be applauding the journalists as national heroes.

On the issue of hacking we should not confuse legality with common decency.

I WROTE this week about the National Council for Palliative Care urging GPs to draw up a list of their patients most likely to die in the next 12 months, with a view to improving end-of-life care.

Bearing in mind the epidemic of information being filched from the NHS and sold to private companies, a reader writes: "If you suddenly get phone calls from people trying to sell cemetery plots, you'll know you are on your GP's list and have a seat booked in the departure lounge."

Have a jolly weekend.