Strange names, strange times

ED (the weird one) and Dave (the one with the knife embedded in his back) were both on telly over the weekend and you can't help noticing that both Milibands have suddenly developed white patches in their hair. Are they suffering from a genetic condition or have they simply been painting a ceiling together?

IT is not hard to see the appeal of Ukip. Nigel Farage has created not so much a political party as a time machine. Ukip is a sort of Tory Party forever stuck in the 1950s, in the England of Genevieve, Grantchester and the Titfield Thunderbolt. It's a time and a place when chaps wore suits by day and tweeds at the weekends, when funny foreigners existed chiefly to amuse us. It was a land of dimpled beer mugs, tobacco smoke and the sort of pubs where someone would pop his head around the door and ask if The Major had been in yet. Farage's time machine is a canny political move because, for as long as humanity has existed, every generation has believed that life was better 50-odd years ago. Nigel Farage has tapped deeply into that sentiment. The Gambols, the decades-defying Daily Express cartoon couple perpetually in the Home Counties of 1955, would definitely have voted for Ukip. And so would The Major.

IN similar vein, I smiled a few days ago to find a letter in a weekly newspaper from someone saying how much better life was in the 1960s when, allegedly, the community spirit was wonderful and we all pulled together. I started work on the same paper in the 1960s and can recall readers' letters complaining that the world was a terrible place and we were all going to hell in a handcart. The letter writers of the 1960s yearned for the wonderful community spirit of the 1930s. 'Twas ever thus.

INCIDENTALLY, when people yearn for the good old days, you can usually demolish the argument with a single word. Dentistry.

AND off to a Christening where the vicar cheerfully introduced the ritual baby-dunking by asking if anyone knew why sheep in the fields were marked with different colours. Anybody? The silence that greeted his question was not so much stunned as pole-axed, for this was a rural parish where everyone knows that the ewes with the ink-dab on their backs are the ones that have been covered (polite rural expression) by the ram. Dilemma. Who, in the House of God on the Sabbath is going to enlighten the vicar on the finer points of ram-tupping? Thankfully, the vicar answered his own question by telling us that sheep are marked to denote ownership, just as little Wayne and Florrie are marked with the cross to signify they are owned by Jesus. Some vicars should spend more time watching Countryfile.

MANY thanks for your suggestions as to why, having bought some woolly socks, I am suddenly afflicted with belly-button fluff. A reader inquires: "Do you have abnormally short legs?" I was hoping for serious advice.

HANG ON. Another email has arrived on the same subject: "Have you by any chance bought a pair of Naval socks?" Hilarious.

ACCUSTOMED as we are to unusual American forenames (Newt, Randy, Bethzy, Miracle, etc), my eye was caught by a report of a family bust-up involving relatives of Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska. The row involved a Korey, a Bristol and a Track.

OUR changing language. Columnist Rachel Johnson (Boris's sister) declares: "I wish we could all have a Bake-Off granny in the kitchen, don't you?" A euphemism is born.