Peter Rhodes: Forget education, try shame

THEY say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but theft comes a pretty close second. I have shamelessly nicked the following from a reader's email because I can't improve upon it: "MPs fiddle expenses, rich avoid tax, unemployed fiddle benefits, traders fiddle Vat and tax, government fiddles statistics. It's what the Prime Minister refers to as all being in it together."

I WAS impressed, too, with an economical little note on my recent item about Enid Blyton's Famous Five. A reader writes: "Richmal could write Enid off the page." Can't argue with that. Richmal Crompton, creator of Just William, was for my money one of the best children's authors of all time. Better than Blyton. Better than Rowling.

THE Joy of 9 to 5 (Radio 4) wondered what had happened to the eight-hour day in a computer age when half of workers reckon to work more than 40 hours a week. Some interviewees claimed to put in lots of hours but do very little work. From my many years as an office slug, I can report that those who claim to be working hard rarely are, and the busy ones are the ones who never look busy.

THE Royal Society of Public Health says obesity could be cut if food labels told us how far we need to walk to burn off the calories. It's a nice idea. But like so many nice ideas it is based on the middle-class assumption that the masses are woefully ignorant and if only they could be educated they would become lean, fit and healthy. Yet there can't be a single adult who does not already know which foods are healthy and which are not. And still millions choose to pig out on fat, sugar and salt, presumably in the belief that it's their life and they can do what they want. In the process, they are selfishly wrecking the NHS for all of us. Education might be part of the answer to the obesity crisis but what about a dose of good, old-fashioned shame?

I FIRST met Graham Phillips more than 20 years ago when he was struggling to make a living as an author of the occult and weird. He and his colleague Martin Keatman were amateurs in a literary world dominated by professionals. And yet that gave them an advantage. Phillips told me how they found many authors, old and new, would claim to have studied the same ancient texts. But when this pair of amateurs went to the great libraries to see the originals, they found some of the texts had not been opened for hundreds of years. Phillips and Keatman started from the beginning. The result was a series of fascinating, controversial but always entertaining books re-examining King Arthur, the Holy Grail, Shakespeare and the legend of Christ's family. Graham Phillips never took himself too seriously, acknowledging that people want their legends to be romantic, whereas he tended to un-glamorise them. As he put it: "People really don't want to be told that the Holy Grail is in an attic in Rugby." He is on telly tonight explaining his latest theory on King Arthur's grave in Jamie Theakston's series, Forbidden History (Yesterday channel, 9pm). Should be good.

MORE things misheard. A reader tells me he has never let his wife forget the time he heard her singing the Hot Chocolate hit to the words: "I believe in Milko."