Best of Peter Rhodes - Feb 15

Here's a selection of the best of the Peter Rhodes column taken from the Express & Star for the week ending February 15.

IF YOU are very good with sums it is possible to calculate your chances of living from 70 to 90, using figures released this week by doctors in Boston. How much simpler it would be if we were all born with a barcode stamped on our bottoms giving us an expiry date. One could plan so much better.

"THE GOAL of spreading democracy should be a great progressive project," declares our little Foreign Secretary David Milliband. Amen to that. I can't wait for some to spread into Britain.

OUR CHANGING language. The Chrysler 300 is hailed as "the most awarded car in history"

A FRIEND was hugely impressed last year when, after he dropped a cherished old vase, his insurance company instantly paid out £177. He's just had his premium-renewal notice. It's gone up by £177.

MY RECENT piece suggesting that Sean Connery would pronounce the next James Bond film as Quantum of Shollish brought a string of e-mails from readers steeped in a rich vein of Sean Connery jokes north of the border. Connery's favourite actress is Shishy Shpashek and his favourite US highway is Route Shixshty Shixsh. Connery's manager rings him about an audition and says: "Sean, be ready for ten-ish."

"But I haven't got a racket," replies Connery.

THE PROBLEM is grubby little toerags in hoodies chucking half-bricks at fire engines. The solution is a 12-bore shotgun loaded with rock salt. A friend who in his misspent youth was peppered (or rather, salted) in the buttocks while scrumping apples in Wisconsin assures me that it stings for weeks.

LATEST wheeze is to convert one of the massive Airbus 380s into a flying casino. There is one obvious drawback. When you lose everything you cannot throw yourself off the roof.

THIS, allegedly, from a commercial radio station in Lancashire:

Presenter: "Name a film starring Bob Hoskins that is also the name of a famous painting by Leonardo Da Vinci."

Contestant: "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"

KEITH Best, head of the Immigration Advisory Service, says more Bangladeshis should be allowed into Britain to save ailing restaurants, because East European workers have "no cultural sensitivity toward the curry industry." Horses for courses, innit? Yer Bangladeshis cook curry, yer Chinese cook chop suey and yer Hungarians cook goulash.

Anyone else thinking of Alf Garnett?

ONLY a few months ago we were told by MI5 that 2,000 Islamists "pose a threat to the country's security." This week, five of these alleged menaces were freed on appeal. Turns out they were not planning anything, merely reading bonkers Jihadist leaflets. So are the other 1,995 Islamists more or less dangerous than this bunch? And how much money is being wasted on the surveillance of geeks who pose about as much threat as Wolfie Smith's Tooting Popular Front?

IN AMERICA it is known as the Shotspotter. It is a series of sensors planted in the mean streets which can detect a gunshot and pinpoint it to within 10 feet. West Midlands Police are said to be interested in acquiring a few. The device may be useful in hunting those grubby little gangstas-wiv-guns who bring so much misery. If I know anything about police, the UK version of the Shotspotter will be known as the Sh*tspotter

ROBERT Whelan of the think-tank Civitas says: "The whole welfare policy has been based on carrots, which are not working." Quite so. And if the carrots refuse to work, the elephant in the living room will be the last straw and the grapes of wrath will come home to roost.

* Has this whetted your appetite for more of Peter's gems? Make sure you read his column every day by picking up a copy of the Express & Star.