Peter Rhodes: Vanishing males

COLUMNIST and curmudgeon Rod Liddle draws our attention to a survey which suggests women do not notice men over 50. Thank heavens for that. I thought it was just me.

INCIDENTALLY, the ignore-a-bloke thing begins in shoe shops. After a certain age, if you pick up a shoe and look around for help, you become instantly invisible.

I SENSED there would be trouble when the new World Snooker Champion Stuart Bingham reflected on the pure hell of getting to the top. What did the title mean to him? "Everything," replied the champ. "Twenty years as a pro. Blood, sweat, and tears, on the road, qualifying in places like Prestatyn and Malvern - places like that." Sure enough, the Mayor of Prestatyn has duly taken offence and publicly declared: "We, the residents, are very proud of our town." I dare say you are, Madam Mayor. But we all know exactly what Bingham was talking about, the separation, isolation and misery of staying in sterile, lookalike hotels in towns you don't know: the loneliness of the long-distance potter. Instead of the mayor going all hurt and defensive, how about doing something imaginative? Like offering Stuart Bingham the freedom of Prestatyn.

SPOT the useful scientific breakthrough. One group of researchers has developed a test for ovarian cancer. Another group is working on a gene test to give more than 12 years' advance warning of dementia. The difference is that the ovarian-cancer test will enable doctors to act quickly and save lives, while the dementia test merely gives you 12 miserable, uninsurable years in which to await an incurable condition. In medicine, as in life, ignorance is sometimes bliss.

IF the SNP goes into coalition in the Westminster parliament, it may be a strangely quiet sort of arrangement. Alone among all the political parties, the SNP is imposing a new gagging rule on its MPs insisting they "accept that no member shall within, or outwith the parliament, publicly criticise a group decision, policy or another member of the group." Vladimir Putin would certainly approve.

TOLD you so. A couple of years ago, as gay marriage was being rushed on to the statute book, I suggested that once the tradition of man + woman had been broken, there was really no reason why marriage should not include all sorts of relationships. A few days ago, the gay website Pink News put the question of threesomes to the Green Party leader Natalie Bennett and this is what she said: "We have led the way on many issues related to the liberalisation of legal status in adult consenting relationships, and we are open to further conversation and consultation." In other words, start planning the three-way reception now. A MetroNews poll in response revealed, at the time of writing, 42 per cent support for three-way marriages and civil partnerships. How quickly attitudes change. It is striking how those Pink News readers who fervently defend two-person marriages now come across as reactionary fuddy-duddies.

WHERE will it end? If it's discriminatory to limit marriage on the grounds of numbers, why restrict it on the grounds of species, especially after a New York court has just ruled that chimpanzees are "legal persons?" A lot of people love their dogs, cats and horses and some animals would look really cute in wedding veils. I'm not entirely sure how a Shetland pony would throw the wedding bouquet or a tame tarantula would catch it but in these enlightened times only a rabid old bigot would nit-pick over the details.