Peter Rhodes: No clink, no cure

AS Moscow's finest continue their cruise to the war in Syria, we have a useful demonstration of what our armed forces could realistically do in the event of a massive Russian armada steaming up the Channel in wartime. Wave.

FRAUGHT moments in channel hopping. By some mischance I landed on Anne Robinson's Britain (BBC1) to find Ms Robinson being prepared for an enema. There should be some sort of warning. Another unintended stop was at The Apprentice (BBC1) where one hopeful was referring to "sumfink." You have to wonder how serious someone in their 20s is about their career when they still have the pronunciation of a toddler. Try elocution, or sumfink.

UKIP is in a bad way. With no permanent leader, no unity and no clear policy programme, it is like a ship without a rudder. Why did this crisis flare into the "handbags at dawn" scrap at the EU in Brussels which hospitalised Steven Woolfe? Here's a guess. Britain currently sends 73 Members of the European Parliament (MEP) to Brussels. Of these, 13 are Ukip MEPs. The difference between them and the other 60 is that the Ukip contingent are working tirelessly for Britain to quit the EU. This, of course, will cost all 73 UK MEPs their seats, plus their £96,000-a-year salary and another £100,000 or so in staff costs, office support, travel and attendance allowances. Being an MEP is one of the cushiest jobs in public life and every Ukip MEP is engineering not only his/her own redundancy but that of his 12 Ukip comrades and all the other Brits. I would image the mood among MEPs post-Brexit is at frazzling point. Handbags at dawn? I bet we see blood on the carpets before this is over.

THERE is something in the Welsh spirit that lends itself to tragedy. I cannot imagine ordinary folk from any other nation speaking so lyrically and profoundly about the agony of Aberfan, 50 years ago this month. They have only to open their mouths and poetry comes out. I was moved by the testimony of Jeff Edwards, the last child recovered alive from the buried school. He grew up to be a local hero, running projects for redundant miners. But he decided that he would never have children because, as he told the BBC, he felt the disaster had "corrupted his DNA." As he put it: "Your personality has changed to such a degree your traits, your make-up, your being has been so fundamentally altered you wouldn't want to perpetuate it." I have interviewed hundreds of survivors of warfare, men and women who witnessed, and sometimes did, the most bestial of things and cannot recall anyone coming to that same bleak conclusion, or laying bare the raw depths of their nightmares so clearly.

THE Siege of Jadotville is a new film about the Zulu-style defence of a United Nations outpost by Irish soldiers in the Congo in 1961. Yet even a brand-new film cannot resist that old movie cliché, the miracle of the clinking bullet. An officer is shot and rushed to the medic who digs out the bullet with tweezers and drops it – clink! - into the obligatory tin dish. In less than 30 seconds, the officer is as right as ninepence. No clink, no cure. Similar sightings welcome.