Peter Rhodes: Bring on the rocket-powered sprinters

A FRIEND of a certain age was mortified to hear himself calling out his food order in the pub: "I'll have the ache and stale pie."

EIGHT years after the event, a solitary City trader, Tom Hayes, has been jailed for 14 years for manipulating the Libor exchange rate. Hayes says the entire industry was at it. If he is right (and why should he lie?), there must be hundreds more former and present traders who were as guilty as he was. We are told "about a dozen" are under investigation. No surprises there, then.

THREE young people who dressed up as golliwogs for a gala day in Caithness (my, doesn't that sound grim?) have handed themselves into the police after complaints of racism. They will not face criminal charges but this incident at least makes the point that blacking up is a useless form of disguise; these three were instantly identified. Yet the growing number of English Morris dancers who black up claim it was an ancient tradition in a small area of the Welsh borders for dancers to darken their faces so as not to be recognised by their bosses. It never sounded particularly convincing and the Caithness incident reveals it as nonsense. So why are so many modern Morris dancers so eager to adopt the once-rare habit of blacking up? Why is it so important to them? Is it history, or something darker?

A READER says his local college is offering English for Speakers of Other Languages under the snappy acronym ESOL. He asks, what initials would they use if the language was Arabic?

WHEN an athlete sets a new world record we should all applaud. However, it is wise to leave a pause between the achievement and the clapping. About ten years is sensible, long enough for the substance-testing system to expose the cheats. Seriously, is anyone greatly shocked at the leaked report of the International Association of Athletics Federations suggesting huge levels of cheating? There is only one sensible way forward. It is to allow athletes in all disciplines to ingest any damn substance they want. Let the world of stimulants, monkey glands, poppers, cocaine and oxygen-enriched blood transfusions be their oyster. These are adults who know the risks so let's see how fast some of these daft, fame-crazed idiots can really go. If they wish to pump their alimentary canal full of kerosene and hurtle down the track with an anal-implanted jet motor, good luck to them. Elite sports would be faster, funnier and far more entertaining. And at least they'd all be competing on a level, if slightly scorched, playing field.

I REFERRED a few days ago to the laws of physics we learned in school. A reader writes: "We think we're so clever because we can remember Ohm's Law, but my wife can remember the birthday and age of the wife of a colleague I last worked with 15 years ago." I have a friend with the same ailment. Let us call it Anniversary-fixation syndrome. It stalks the female population. Birthdays, anniversaries and the names of spouses, partners and children stick in their grey matter like lint in the Sellotape drawer. Men remember useful things like the engine capacity of the original Mini but women remember Cousin Alice's third daughter's wedding anniversary.

THE Mini engine capacity? All together, lads: 848ccs. And if you tell your wife, I guarantee within an hour she will have forgotten it.