Peter Rhodes: A close brush with Adolf Hitler

OH, no! Shock, horror! The annual inflation rate is at a two-year high! It has hit (wait for it, cue roll on the drums) one per cent! Some of us of a certain age were unmoved by this week's panic-stricken bleatings of youthful journalists and City experts. That's because we remember 1975 when inflation hit 25 per cent. We all survived.

THIS week the first of the "children" arrived from the Calais Jungle. They do not look like children. They look more like soldiers. It was a PR disaster. Given the suspicion that the system is being abused by adults posing as children, this was the perfect photo- opportunity for the authorities to bring a group of the sweetest, tiniest and most vulnerable little Jungle children to the UK. Instead of that heart-melting image, we were presented with a column of tall, confident youths. I can think of three explanations. Firstly, there are very few real children with British connections in the Jungle. Secondly, no-one in authority knows how the media works. Or thirdly, no-one connected with the migration programme gives a damn what the British public thinks.

ANYWAY, the truth about the migrants' ages will soon be revealed, probably by the first head teacher who is expected to take responsibility for putting someone who looks 20 into a class of real 15-year-olds.

AS we lob yet another space probe at Mars, Today (Radio 4) hosts a discussion of scientists. They point out that while intelligent life does not exist on Mars, as portrayed by H G Wells in The War of the Worlds, the Red Planet still has plenty of secrets. Let's not dismiss Wells' fiction too quickly. At the climax of his 1897 tale the Martians, for all their technical superiority, are wiped out by a simple human virus. At some stage in the Mars project, astronauts or robots will return to Earth from Mars - and who knows what they'll have on their boots? Way back in 1973 the astronomer and author Carl Sagan wrote: "It is possible that on Mars there are pathogens, organisms which, if transported to the terrestrial environment, might do enormous biological damage." We have been warned.

AFTER my recent piece on the 770-calorie sandwich, a reader sends me the menu he took from a chippie in Glasgow. The bill of fare begins: "Chips. Chips and cheese. Chips and curry/gravy. Chips, cheese and curry. Deep-fried Mars Bar." In some parts of Glasgow life expectancy is 57. I'm amazed they last that long.

THE Scots have a wonderful graveyard humour about their grim state of health. When the voting age was lowered from 18 to 16 for their independence referendum, some wags described it as "extending the vote to the middle-aged."

THANKS for your tales of near-misses with celebrities. A reader recalls an encounter with an elderly German lady on holiday in Greece who admitted attending pre-war Nazi rallies. At one, Hitler walked through the adoring crowd and paused to pat her left cheek. As she and my reader parted, he kissed her on the same cheek. He asks: "Does this count as a near-miss?"