Peter Rhodes: How to scare a scary clown

MEMO to all those bad losers in the Commons complaining that MPs must be given a vote on Brexit. You've already cast your vote. You had it on June 23, just like the rest of us.

IN a matter of hours the internet can create a fad that would have taken months to organise in the old days. The latest is the scourge of "scary clowns," terrorising people all over Britain in the run-up to Halloween. Before that it was the ice-bucket challenge. Come to think of it, a bucketful of iced water on a chilly October evening might be the perfect way to deal with scary clowns.

IN their defence, at least the scary clowns are succeeding at being scary. This is in contrast to real clowns who repeatedly fail to be amusing.When did you last see a funny clown? How many nights at the circus are ruined when a succession of dazzlingly athletic and dangerous acts is suddenly interrupted by half-a-dozen linguistically-challenged and deeply unfunny old men with fake buckets of water and an exploding car?

OVER the past 40-of years I have occasionally written about unfunny clowns. I've only ever had one letter of objection and that came from a professional clown. I wonder if he put on a big sad paint-face to write it.

IN the continuing campaign to create civil war between old and young, Dispatches (C4) examined the alleged wealth gap between pensioners and so-called millennials in their 20s and 30s. It was the usual litany of woe from young people who can't afford to buy houses while old people rattle around in grand mansions living in luxury on gold-plated pensions. Reality check, please. A reader writes to remind me that, until the 1960s, millions of working-class folk like her lived in council houses that were little better than slums, some with shared toilets. In the 1980s this "lucky" generation hit mass unemployment, crippling mortgage rates of up to 15 per cent and negative equity. She's thankful to be retired, home-owning and in good health but is far from rich. She wonders how the millennials, endlessly moaning about their lot, would have coped.

IT occurs to me, too, that millennials, living in an age when globalisation

has made everything dirt-cheap, have no idea how expensive consumer goods were for their parents. If smartphones had been invented in the 1970s, how much would one have cost - £2,000, perhaps?

WHERE fat comes from. Fancying a light snack on the motorway, I bought a BLT sandwich in a service station this week. The large print on the wrapper boasted about the crisp lettuce and vine-ripened tomatoes. The small print revealed it contained 770 calories - equivalent to nearly three Mars Bars.

I FINALLY got around to seeing the film Brooklyn, a wonderful tale of homesickness. Based on an Irish novel, it was filmed in Ireland with Irish stars and tells the tale of an Irish girl who leaves Ireland to join the Irish community in Brooklyn before returning to Ireland. As you have probably guessed, it is as Irish as shamrocks, Guinness and leprechauns dancing in Galway Bay. And at this year's Baftas, this joyous, bittersweet celebration of Irishness was named Best British Film which, if you happen to be Irish, must be feckin annoying.