Best of Peter Rhodes - August 10

ALMOST hidden by coverage of the Olympic Games, is the news that researchers in Seattle claim that chemotherapy can actually make some cancers worse. If they are right, the implications for millions of patients, the bereaved and, of course, lawyers, are absolutely enormous. The Olympics is a very good time to bury bad news.

TELEVISION will have reached its final stage of development when we can actually reach inside the screen, grab the speakers and give them a damn good shaking. I would have been sorely tempted by Harriet Harman's performance as she admitted that Labour got it wrong with its Gambling Act which stuffed our high streets with gaming machines, adding to Britain's estimated 450,000 problem gamblers. She whined about "if we had known then what we know now." But what was not to know, Ms Harman? Were you and the rest of Blair's crew not aware that gambling is a social evil? It is the very antithesis of socialism, taking money from the poor and stuffing it in the pockets of rich companies. And yet a Labour government unleashed more means of wrecking the budgets of poor families through gambling than any other government in modern times. And now they think saying sorry makes everything better?

AS I waited at the kerb at a zebra crossing, a big silver 4x4 appeared about 100 yards away. I assumed he would stop. He did not. He sailed merrily across the crossing, head down. Texting.

THERE is a growing, and frankly terrifying, tide of opinion that Boris Johnson should be the next Tory leader and Prime Minister. It seems to be largely based on the triumph of the London Olympics, his defeat of Labour's Ken Livingstone in the capital's mayoral elections and the popular assumption that Boris is a bit of a laugh. Some of those who know him better take a different view. They see a ruthlessly ambitious politician who exudes charm in carefully measured doses to win people over. At various stages in his life and career, Boris Johnson has shown himself to have feet of clay. And while it may be possible to be the buffoonish Mayor of London with so many own-goals and skeletons in the cupboard, do we really want Boris Johnson in charge of our armed forces with his finger on Britain's nuclear button? If that's a bit of a laugh, I'm Dr Strangelove.

A COLLEGE at Cambridge has urged its students not to wear academic gowns in town for fear of "incidents" with the locals. Wise advice. In slobby, ill-educated Britain, possessing anything resembling an intellect is now a punching offence. If you want to stay safe, wear an England football shirt, acquire a beer belly and an armful of tattoos, avoid any conversation involving Nietzsche, Darwin or Coleridge and keep very quiet indeed about your master's degree in divinity.

"SOME of us oldies had nose-dived into the cocoa." The matchless TV critic Clive James admitting even he found the Olympic opening ceremony a tad long.

THE riots which erupted a year ago this week were co-ordinated by thugs using social networks. Two can play at that game. If it happens again, be prepared for a fascinating combination of 18^th century law and 21^st century technology as police tweet the Riot Act.

ALF Thompson, a 60-year-old "Cavalier" with the Sealed Knot Civil War re-enactment society, has received the Police Public Bravery Award for disarming and overpowering a knife-wielding robber who was trying to slash a shop assistant's throat. The robber is now in prison. Mr Thompson says: "Something snapped and I thought I was 20 again. If it wasn't for the re-enactment group, I never could have done it." A tale to restore our faith in human nature, Cavaliers and Roundheads alike.

IS ANYONE else perturbed at the large number of press photographs from the Olympics focusing on the nether regions of young female competitors? If anyone was caught taking those sort of photographs in any setting other than a sports meeting, he'd have his collar felt pretty damn quick.

"COMPUTER games may well spell the beginning of the end for a kid's social skills, creative thinking, health and fitness. I'd go further and say they're steadily obliterating thousands of years of amazing evolution." The writer is Chris Evans this week, proving that if you give a wild, rebellious, mould-breaking, bad-mouthing, granny-shocking wonder kid enough time, he'll start harrumphing like a Home Counties brigadier. Welcome to the club.