Coping with Airedales in Liverpool

THE joy of a Scouse accent. I caught a snippet of a telly interview with a sportswoman from Merseyside explaining how her team had to cope with “them Airedales.” Hurdles, apparently.

I LOST count on Any Questions (Radio 4) how many times Her Serene Magnificence Baroness Chakrabarti of Whitewash referred to liberty, democracy and all that stuff. Yet she is not exactly a product of democracy. She has never been elected to anything. She is one of 850 members of the House of Lords, accountable to no voters and charging us £300 a day to turn up at what is undoubtedly the best club in London. Their Lordships like to pose as bastions of our liberty. Some of us see merely an undemocratic and expensive chamber of the privileged. Not so much a great national asset as just another collection of mouths to feed.

IF you haven't done the sums yet, it takes the TV licence fees from more than 15,000 homes to employ Gary Lineker at the BBC for a year. For the same price you could get a member of the House of Lords every day for more than 20 years. I'm not sure which is the worse deal.

THE Advertising Standards Authority is outlawing gender stereotypes. This new piece of social engineering will ensure there will be no daffy housewives and no kitchen-incompetent husbands appearing in adverts. The harmless amusement known as the battle of the sexes has entertained humankind ever since the first caveman burnt the first mammoth burgers and the first princess reversed her chariot into the river. But no more. As the ASA spokesperson explained grimly: “We know that depicting gender stereotypes in ads has the potential to reinforce expectations as to how groups or individuals should look or behave because of their gender - and that can have a potentially harmful effect.” Interestingly, the author of the ASA's mirthless diktat is one Ella Smilie but I guess we're not supposed to laugh at that, either.

YOU would think, would you not, that the most fervent gender campaigns would involve the most blatant discrimination? Not so. Britain has about 40,000 registered midwives but barely 100 of them are male. And yet I hear no shrill protests and see no banners unfurled. A mystery, innit?

AS the new film, Dunkirk, is released, I recall interviewing a veteran, Private Cecil Rhodes (seriously, and no relation). Seventy years after the evacuation, he vividly remembered the blend of shame and celebrity he and his mates experienced: “We were sent to London and the Salvation Army took us to a theatre. Someone on stage said there were some lads from Dunkirk in. We stood up and everyone clapped us. But we didn’t feel like heroes. We felt we had done our country down. But what else could we do?”

RESEARCHERS in Exeter and London claim that doing a daily word game such as a crossword, can keep the brain young. What, even those of us who struggle for hours with “Six letters - One whose leader goes out every morning”? Eventually I cracked it: “Editor.” (In my defence, most of my career has been spent on evening newspapers).