Peter Rhodes: Killing your enemy's hope

AFTER the Manchester suicide bombing, all decent people ask the same question: Why would they target children? There are two simple reasons. The first is that, as far as a dedicated jihadist is concerned, all unbelievers are worthless kuffir who must be converted or slaughtered. In their twisted view, Western teenagers in particular are the immodest, sinful spawn of a degenerate and unbelieving society.

THE second reason is the one that motivated the snipers outside besieged Sarajevo 25 years ago to shoot children in the streets below. If you kill an adult you may kill a community's nurse or a soldier. But if you kill a child you kill the community's future. You kill their hope.

AFTER that pageboy flicked a V-sign during Pippa Middleton's wedding, a photographer writes to the Daily Telegraph complaining bitterly about “the current craze for posturing, pouting and V-signs in photographs.” A current craze? Come off it. In our official school photograph of 1965, one first-former in the front row sticks his tongue out while his mate gives a V-sign. It was pure madness with no hope of escape and as soon as the photographer delivered his prints, vengeance for the two boys was swift and painful.

THE school-photo incident has always made me dubious about CCTV cameras. They may help cops track down the offender after the incident but no power on earth can quell the irrational, blinkered silliness raging inside the heads of so many young males. Society has spent thousands of years trying to make youths think before they act. No luck so far.

IN middle age and old straw hat, doesn't Joe Swift, presenter of Chelsea Flower Show, look the image of his father? Clive Swift, 81, is best known as Richard Bucket, the eternally suffering husband in the BBC sitcom Keeping Up Appearances. When Joe looks to camera introducing the begonias at Chelsea, you half-expect him to come out with: “Oh, for goodness' sake, Hyacinth . . .”

THE spirit of Alan Partridge lives on at BBC Radio Leeds where presenter Nathan Turvey invited listeners to guess the identity of “a “well-known person who has been in the news this week” from a series of musical clues, including Suffer Little Children by the Smiths and Psycho Killer by Talking Heads. The answer was the Moors Murderer, Ian Brady. The BBC has apologised for this hideously crass blunder. I find myself wondering whether Nathan Turvey is related to Rik Mayall's inept “investigative reporter” of blessed memory, Kevin Turvey.

AFTER last week's gripping account of my holiday-cuisine creation, Pilchard Surprise (boil a pilchard in pasta sauce until it disintegrates), here's something more enticing. I took an old bottle of Madeira on our all-boys holiday to Scotland and used it to create a dessert with all the healthy, well-intentioned fruit packed by our wives. I give you Madeira Delight. 1) Put a layer of chopped apples and pears in a bowl, cover with Madeira, add a little sugar and taste. 2) Add a layer of chopped bananas, cover with Madeira, add a little sugar and taste. 3) Add a layer of tangerine segments, cover with Madeira, add a little sugar and taste. 4) Place in fridge for three hours. 5) Try to remember where you put it.