Seen the latest Chaplin comedy?

I SUGGESTED last week that "the Go-To Bank" (Barclays) was the most irritating and vacuous sales slogan I'd heard for a long time. And then along comes this gem, designed to sell razors to people who are no good at maths. The razor's results are apparently: "Up to 100 per cent redness-free." How many dimwits swallow this guff? Up to 100 per cent.

A PICTURE is worth a thousand words but can cause copyright problems. So let me merely describe the funniest image I've seen on the new law to stop adults smoking in cars containing children. It's a cartoon and the kids in the back seat are asking their father: "Are we nearly there yet? We're dying for a smoke."

A MILLION homes have allegedly been saved from flooding thanks to some inspired projects by the Environment Agency over the past few years. In all the coverage, I don't think I've seen a single one of those 1,000,000 householders saying thank-you.

TELEVISION reporters envy our newspaper headlines. The worse the news gets, the bigger the headlines get. It's like a volume switch. The only way TV news can compete with big headlines is by ordering its reporters to stand somewhere noisy and shout. So while newspaper hacks compose their flood reports sitting in nice warm pubs or the comfort of a heated photographer's car (I mean the car is heated, not the photographer), TV crews have to stand in the teeth of the storms and yell their socks off as their equipment packs up: "HELLO!!! I'M SPEAKING TO YOU FROM DEVON AND IT'S ABSOLUTELY CHUCKING IT DOWN!!! I CAN BARELY STAND UP!!! THE WIND IS BLOWING OUR AERIAL ABOUT AND YOUR PICTURE QUALITY MAY BE AFFECTED ***********@@@-----***----- AND NOW OVER TO JON SNOW STANDING IN A RIVER."

I AM, however, mightily impressed with the TV flood footage obtained from camera drones. There was a fabulous long shot of a flooded railway line. As the bridge came closer, you suddenly realised the camera was about to fly under it. Behold, the future.

WHO would have guessed, a generation ago, that in the year 2014 we sophisticated, endlessly demanding television viewers would be falling about laughing over a silent (or at least wordless) comedy starring somebody called Chaplin? The comedy series Inside Number 9 (BBC2) is the creation of the League of Gentlemen duo Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton. The second in the series was A Quiet Night In, one of the cleverest and funniest things I've seen on telly for years. It featured Oona Chaplin, the 27-year-old grand-daughter of Charlie Chaplin. She says she thinks he would have approved of the show. I'm sure he would have loved it, not just for Oona's appearance but to see Pemberton and Shearsmith's split-second timing, as perfected by the Master 100 years ago.

I DO apologise for missing out the D-word in the above item. It is a rule of reviewing that you cannot possibly mention The League of Gentlemen (1999-2002, and sadly missed) without describing it as dark. Oh, so dark.

I RARELY feel a flash of pity for the pensions industry but the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence's advice to put millions more people on statins must be causing panic attacks in the City. Imagine you are a pension provider. You have worked out how much pension you can afford to pay a million punters, based on the best available life-expectation figures. Suddenly it's statins all round and the old 'uns you expected to be off the planet by the age of 80 will be reaching 90. Oops.