Peter Rhodes: Dying to be famous?

THANKS for your football connections of the late Glen Campbell's 1968 hit. My favourite so far is the opening: "I am the linesman for Notts County."

I MEANT to use this item last week. It concerns a huge medical survey in the States which examined the medical records of 333,247 people over eight years and concluded that a daily glass of wine or a bottle of beer significantly cuts the risk of early deaths. The snag with cheerful reports such as this is that they are barely out of the bag before they are overtaken by some grim kill-joy discovery that any amount of booze is bad. So quickly, before this report is rubbished, get it dahn yer.

I CAN'T think of a comedy series which has made me laugh as much as Quacks (BBC2). It's a gloriously grisly, over-the-top tale of 19th century medicine, a sort of blend of Dickensian and Plebs. It's on BBC iPlayer and if you haven't caught it, do.

TWO days after the Charlie Hebdo massacre in January 2015, a gunman ran into a kosher supermarket in Paris, killing four people and taking others hostage. Unbelievably, while the siege was still going on, a 24-hour French TV channel reported that a survivor was hiding in the supermarket's cold room. When their ordeal was over the survivors from the cold room launched legal action against the broadcaster. The BBC reported their lawyer's outraged words: "The disclosure of the presence of people hiding, during a hostage situation, is an error which cannot go unpunished." Surely such an enormous blunder would make all broadcasters ultra-cautious in future. You think?

AFTER the massacre in Barcelona last week, while police were still hunting the driver, a British tourist suddenly popped up on BBC News to tell Jane Hill, live on air, what was happening. He revealed that he and about 80 others were hiding in a nearby church. Hill repeated his account. Before long "80 hiding in church" was on the TV headlines. This tourist and BBC News were telling the world - including the terrorists and their supporters - where to find 80 terrified infidels. Imagine how you would have felt, concealed in that church and more scared than you had ever been, to hear someone on a mobile, blabbing about your hiding place. He should have been guided by the words of the old hymn which tell us: "When to speak and when be silent." This was a good moment to be very silent indeed.

MY week of anguish with our landline meant using a mobile phone, which I hate. What I find particularly irritating is the message "long press the * key" whenever you leave it unattended for a while. "Long press"? How did that ever creep into the English language?

YOU may have noticed, in the entire and ongoing saga of my landline, I have never once accused BT of lacking confidence. I cherish their text message to me about the fault: "We aim to fix it by 17/08/2017." The message is dated 18/08/2017.