Peter Rhodes: Keep the bongs bonging

IT is beyond pathetic. It is a national disgrace that the bells of Big Ben will soon fall silent for months of repairs. For a few thousand pounds, any competent sound engineer could install a clock and audio system to keep the bongs bonging. When a solution is simple, why are we so eager to embrace defeat?

I MET Rabbi Lionel Blue in 1985 on the publication of his book, Kitchen Blues. Picking it up this week after his death was announced, I see he signed it: "Thank you for a nice interview." But how could anyone not be nice to such a nice bloke? I asked him about his curious surname. Blue explained how his family, named Bluestein, fled from Russia to England and decided to choose an English name. A fellow passenger assured them that any colour would do because so many British men were Mr Brown, Mr Green, Mr White, and so on. And so the family shortened Bluestein to Blue which, as he explained with a wry smile, proved to be just about the only colour which isn't an English surname.

THE most terrifying terrorist image of the week was not the lorry hurtling into the Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 innocents. It was the off-duty cop, Mevlut Mert Altintas, screaming "God is great" as he assassinated Russia's ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov. We can monitor dodgy migrants. We can erect barricades against lorries. But what protection is there against a home-grown, clean-shaven, seemingly Westernised police officer in smart suit and tie who can slip unchallenged into any place he chooses and suddenly unleash the demons he has been hiding for years?

JUST before Christmas 15 years ago an old girlfriend of mine from the 1960s took her own life. Just as her mother had done. Just as her aunt had done. It is a rarely mentioned fact that "clusters" of suicides are found in some families. Scientists call it "the heredity of suicidal behaviour." As the Government prepares its new suicide-prevention policy, MPs of the Health Select Committee called this week for more training to help GPs spot patients at risk and more support after patients are discharged from psychiatric services. But while the symptoms of profound depression must be treated, is enough being done to identify, and perhaps one day fix, the self-destruct genes that seem to haunt some families for generations?

THE Health Select Committee also blames "irresponsible" reporting of suicide by the media leading to "copycat" suicides. It is a dilemma that haunts every journalist, coroner and police officer. As an old district reporter told me more than 40 years ago: "If we report two people jumping in front of trains, there will always be a third."

MY thanks to those readers who have sent me the full version of the joke about the parrot and the owl. As you may remember, I could recall the punchline but nothing else. Anyway, it turns out to be a Roy Chubby Brown gag. Frankly, I'm astonished that readers of this learned and genteel column should know such stuff. You should all be thoroughly ashamed of yourselves.

SO proud. I have been invited to speak at WOLF, Wolverhampton Original Literature Festival, next month, presumably because of all the literature wot I write.