Charles and Grayson – what a lovely couple

OUR changing language. A BBC announcer told us that last night's series Britain's Great War would explain "how the Great War impacted Britain."

COMING up, the First World War, impact by impact. Huns impact Belgium. Old Contemptibles impact Huns. Brits impact Loos. Huns impact Verdun. Brits impact Somme, Ypres and Passchendaele. Bolsheviks impact Tsar. Huns impact entire Western Front. Brits impact Hindenburg Line. Armistice impacts Huns. Spanish Flu impacts everybody. And the winner is – American grammar.

GRAYSON Perry is a cross-dressing artist who turned up to receive his CBE award from the Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace wearing a sleek blue number which he called his "Italian mother of the bride" dress. Prince Charles, not to be outdone in the preposterous-outfit stakes, was wearing a chestful of medals, armfuls of gold braid, and the dress uniform of the Admiral of the Fleet. What a deliciously wacky couple. Makes you proud to be British.

MEANWHILE , back at the ukulele club, 50 of us are belting out the theme song from Rawhide. Nothing reflects the changing values of society more than its popular music. Take this verse on cattle management from Rawhide (1959-66): "Don't try to understand 'em / Just rope and throw and brand 'em." If you wrote a line like that today the RSPCA would be knocking on your door.

SIMILARLY, George Formby would be lucky to get off with a caution for "When I'm Cleaning Windows," a song which amounts to a full and frank admission to the crime of voyeurism, contrary to the 2003 Sexual Offences Act ("By installing equipment or constructing or adapting a structure with the intention of enabling the offender or another person to observe a private act.").

LIKEWISE, Maurice Chevalier would be banged up before he got to the second verse of "Thank Heaven for Little Girls."

AND when the sexual revolution of the 1960s arrived, some very dodgy ideas emerged in pop songs. It was a time, lest we forget, when the Paedophile Information Exchange, affiliated to the government-funded National Council for Civil Liberties, was openly campaigning for sex with children. A string of pop records cheerfully blurred the line between women and girls. Can you imagine anyone today writing songs with titles such as Young Girl, Sweet Little Sixteen or Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon? Today, as a seemingly endless succession of celebrities from that era face the metaphorical music, we should never forget what a very strange and sometimes dark time it was. Now, I must get back to my rewrite, bringing the Beatles' track into the 21st century. All together now: "You come on like a dream, peaches and cream, lips like strawberry wine / You're 16, you're beautiful - and I'm nicked."

A GLOBAL financial mogul told a reporter he was excited by "new innovations" at the Davos conference. "New innovations" is a grammatical howler, slapped out of rookie reporters in their first week in the job. If global financial moguls can't do English why should we believe they are any better at maths?

MARVELLOUS moment on Farming Today (Radio 4) when the reporter asked a 90-year-old Scottish farmer whether his son's farming techniques made him anxious. Not at all, replied the old chap. He'd been anxious crossing the Rhine with the 51st Highland Division but was rather less anxious these days.

OF COURSE, to understand what the old farmer was talking about, you need to know that the 51st Highland Division was a unit of the British Army and the Crossing of the Rhine in 1945 was one of the bloodiest campaigns of the Second World War. I wonder what proportion of the people hearing the interview had a clue what the old chap meant? Ten per cent, perhaps?