Peter Rhodes: What's with the ghosts?

"TRUMP loses wind farm legal challenge." Best headline of the week.

WHAT is it with ghosts in TV dramas these days? In River (BBC1), the detective was haunted by his dead colleague. In The Bridge (BBC4) a cop is haunted by his missing, presumed dead, wife and kids. And then Luther (BBC1) returned this week and blow me if our hero (Idris Elba) isn't chatting with the shade of his murdered buddy Justin (Warren Brown). Shakespeare would have loved it but how odd to see so many ghosts in the 21st century.

STILL on TV drama, hats off to Andrew Davies, the veteran scriptwriter who, in his 80th year, has adapted Tolstoy's mammoth novel War and Peace for the BBC. Davies admits he'd never even read the book until he was invited to adapt it. He simply sat down, read it through, and produced the script. Most blokes of that age would pick up War and Peace, read a few pages, put it down and forget where they'd left it. Davies must have a vast memory as well as great creativity. When I interviewed him some years ago and asked where he found all the inspiration for his many sex scenes, he smiled sweetly and replied: "It's just my murky imagination, I'm afraid."

AS debate rages about lowering the voting-age limit to 16 for the EU referendum, a Daily Telegraph reader suggests that if 16 and 17-year-olds go on the electoral roll, they will immediately get a credit rating and become fair game for the credit industry. The price of democracy - one vote now and a lifetime in the claws of the moneylenders.

YOU really must excuse the older generation for not joining all the kids in punching the air in celebration as Tim Peake begins his tour of duty on the International Space Station. One newspaper's science writer, who looks about 12, trills that this is "a giant leap in British space exploration." Let's keep it in perspective, eh? Major Tim is 250 miles high. In 1969 we watched man land on the moon which is 250,000 miles away. In 1971 and 1972 astronauts used the Lunar Roving Vehicle. That's right, kids. More than 40 years ago, blokes were driving a car on the moon. Back then we assumed that by 2015 we'd have colonies on Mars, but the money ran out. So while a 250-mile hop into orbit is as courageous and inspiring as ever, let's not fool ourselves. The giant leap into space is still on the drawing board.

AND excuse us, too, for being old-duffery and unhysterical about the new blockbuster, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I dare say it is brilliant. And yet after so many Star Wars films we all know more or less what to expect. So let me take you back to an encounter with the utterly unexpected, to the third row in the stalls in a cinema in Lewisham in 1977 when the original Star Wars burst upon the wide, wide screen and our little gang was utterly gobsmacked. What a night that was. To this day I cannot see the damaged C3PO spilling Princess Leia's message: "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope" without blinking away a tear.

AND don't get me started on the unconvincing shark in Jaws. Today we laugh out loud at it but, believe me, when that rubber fish first snapped in 1975, the entire cinema audience shot into the air.