Peter Rhodes: My perfect Christmas

MY PERFECT Christmas? Ant and Dec bite the head and limbs off that irritating Morrisons tap-dancing gingerbread man. The John Lewis bear runs out of toilet paper and uses the lovable hare instead. The warm-hearted Boots hoodie-kid is banged up until February for shoplifting. November 14 and I'm already all humbugged out.

THERE is no mystery about why this country is run, as John Major points out, by privately-educated rich kids. Things could have been so different. Until the 1960s Britain was engaged in the biggest exercise in social mobility this country has ever seen. Bright working-class kids were offered a free state education to rival anything the public schools could offer. The result was tens of thousands of kids, the sons and daughters of bus drivers, shopworkers and miners, pouring into the universities and technical colleges and rising, as John Major rose, to the top in politics and the professions. This was a serious threat to the ruling classes. It was also an affront to red-rag socialists who despised anything they perceived as elite. And so the grammar schools were closed and the products of Eton, Harrow, Marlborough and Winchester once again flourished, unchallenged by the oiks.

MIND you, our kids are probably better educated than in America where a lecturer related this exchange:

Teacher: "We're going to read To Kill a Mockingbird."

Student: "Is the bird made of tequila or is the tequila made of a bird?"

IF A Conservative MP had dared utter the remarks made by David Blunkett about Roma gipsies, he would have vanished under howls of disapproval and dark mutterings about Enoch Powell and "Rivers of Blood." But Blunkett is, as they say, sound. Blind from birth, he's an Old Labour son of toil, popular on both sides of the House. Blunkett warns that cultural tensions between Roma and local people could "implode" into a re-run of the 2001 race riots in northern towns. The former home secretary may be right. Britain has a brilliant record of assimilating different cultures but it's a process that works best when people arrive gradually. In 2011 the Government announced there were "relatively few" Roma citizens in the UK. Two weeks ago it was revealed that 200,000 have settled. How the hell did that happen?

AND off, oh joy, oh bliss, to the prostate-cancer event. A neighbour has just heard that an old friend has been diagnosed with the disease. The patient has urged all his acquaintances to go for the PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) blood test. A few blokes duly turned up at a local sports hall for the test. I went along to give my neighbour moral support but I was buttonholed by an eager lady who said: "While you're here, why not have the test?" as though only a fool would decline. I had done some reading beforehand about what is one of the biggest arguments in the medical profession. The NHS position is simple: "There is currently no screening programme for prostate cancer in the UK because it has not been proven that the benefits would outweigh the risks." The risks include false positives, false negatives and needless surgery which can leave you impotent and incontinent. The charities organising screening argue that even a flawed test is better than nothing. My neighbour had the test and was reassured with a low score. I declined. There is hope of a more accurate test before too long. The sooner, the better.

INCIDENTALLY, has there ever been a time where a group of men, confronted with a hypodermic needle, have not made nervous jokes about a tiny prick?

STILL below the belt, I am grateful to I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue (Radio 4) for this medical definition. Colonnade: a fizzy enema.