Now, how about the Diarrhoea Song?

GORDON Brown is resigning as an MP. How will we tell the difference?

REMEMBER Me (BBC1), the new supernatural thriller starring Michael Palin proves once again that nothing makes us dive behind the sofa quite like dark old houses, creaky floorboards, flickering shadows and something suddenly going BANG! The old ingredients are still the best.

MEDIA doctor Max Pemberton points out to Bob Geldof that Ebola is by no means the biggest threat to Africa. As he puts it: "Diarrhoea kills far more people than Ebola. Why hasn't Bob released a single about that?" Possibly because the Diarrhoea Song already exists. It is often heard being sung lustily on coach trips by Year Six kids and, frankly, no-one would want to buy it.

WAY back, as the year 2000 approached, I suggested a fine millennium project would be to choose one of Britain's more derelict medieval castles and rebuild it. The project would provide years of work for craftsmen and apprentices. It would also show generations of schoolkids how kings and barons really lived in ye olden days. If the UK had embraced such a project, by now it would be almost finished and would be a source of huge national pride. But we didn't. So it's a wee bit galling to see that great national treasure Ruth Goodman in Secrets of the Castle (BBC2). She and her team are exploring how castles were built 800 years ago. To do so, they had to travel to the Burgundy region of France where a castle is being built from scratch in a 25-year project. The French can do such things. The Brits, apparently, can not.

HERE'S a fascinating new twist on my saga of dodgy insurance policies foisted on house buyers and sellers. A solicitor tells me he has been instructing clients to pay these premiums for the past 40 years, often knowing they are pointless. He says: " It drives me up the wall when I have to tell the client that insurance is required and that they have to fork out sometimes £400 for a policy that will not be claimed on. I am not aware of any claim in respect of this type of policy in those 40-plus years." But, he says, don' t blame the solicitors because "as professionals we are governed by certain rules . . . and also specific instructions from mortgage lenders who insist on insurance if there is a deed or planning consent missing or the slightest inconsistency. It's not the solicitors' fault and we don't get any benefit from one financial institution (bank or building society) insisting our clients put money in the pockets of another (insurance company)."

SO there we have it. A solicitor at the sharp end has his doubts about these policies. But shouldn't we all be suspicious? Shouldn't our MPs be digging into this practice? In the meantime, I wonder what might be the effect if every lawyer confronted with such a policy wrote to the moneylender or insurance company: "In my view this is a scam, involving a non-existent 'risk,' designed purely to extract money from my client. If a national inquiry is subsequently held into such practices, I would be happy to testify about your part in it." Just a thought.

ED Miliband, without a hint of a grin or an ounce of irony, tells us the word that springs into his mind when he sees white-van man flying England flags from his Transit is "respect." Which is odd because the rest of us think: "Bet he's using a mobile phone."