Peter Rhodes: Hilda talking posh

A READER who has reservations about Brexit writes: "How much further must the pound fall before the penny drops?"

ALCOHOL can unleash all sorts of urges. English Heritage has unveiled its festive Rhubarb Vodka. One shot and I felt a desperate desire for custard.

SO farewell, Jean Alexander who has died aged 90. The strangest thing was the archive footage of her describing her Coronation Street character, in her normal voice. Eee, our Hilda's talkin' reet posh.

MORE on the fascinating subject of how much today's micro-chip gizmos would cost if they had been invented in the days before globalisation. A reader uses a formula based on the rising cost of his house, expressed in the number of contemporary TVs needed to match its value. In the 1970s his first house was worth 55 TVs. A similar house today is worth 1,385 TVs. Using this formula he estimates that, if technology and globalisation had not forced down the price of consumer goods, the current price of a TV would be £8,000 and an Apple iPhone 6s smartphone would cost £14,000.

ITEMS such as the above always make me nervous. There are some subjects (steam trains and handguns spring to mind) that we hacks should avoid because we always get something wrong and the experts are so passionate / deranged on the subject that they may do you harm. Mathematics is one of those subjects. I await the maelstrom.

ONE glaring question hangs over Jeremy Corbyn's ongoing furore about Baroness Chakrabarti. It is this: did none of the ****ing ****s running Corbyn's ****ing useless PR operation ever watch The Thick of It (BBC)? If they had, they would have realised by now that the storyline of Chakrabarti embarrassing the party by sending her child to private school is a re-run of minister Nicola Murray's (Rebecca Front) anguish in Armando Iannucci's darkly brilliant political satire. The big difference is that in real life Corbyn is lacking the hyperactively foul-mouthed spin-doctor Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) to knock his minions into line. In The Thick of It, Tucker verbally batters the minister into submission, giving her a stark choice between sending her kid to the local comprehensive or packing her bags and heading for the back benches. In the finest traditions of Westminster, Nicola Murray puts career before kids. Rule one of politics: never embarrass the party.

MIND you, even The Thick of It never came up with a storyline about a hugely respected liberal campaigner of unquestioned integrity producing a "whitewash" report on anti-semitism and being appointed to the House of Lords a few weeks later. When even Daily Mirror readers are describing the baroness's reputation as going "from hero to zero," she really should be worried.

THANKS for your tales of near-misses with celebrities. So far I've heard from a town crier who spent 15 hours on a train missing a meeting with Anneka Rice, a lady who toured Jersey in the 1980s and was told at every stop: "You should have been here yesterday, John Nettles was filming Bergerac" and a man who found himself using a urinal next to Hank Marvin and decided it was best not to shake hands.