Express & Star

Peter Rhodes on a feminist washing day and other curious statues

A PROPOSED statue of the suffragist leader Millicent Fawcett may have to be redesigned. Early drafts show Millicent holding a banner reading: "Courage calls to courage everywhere." Snag is, some folk have pointed out that, viewed from the side, it looks like Millicent is hanging out the washing, which is hardly the right sort of feminist message.

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And you, too. The Richard Baxter statue in Kidderminster

BUT then statues are tricky things. People interpret them in all sorts of ways. Every true-born Brummie knows, for example, that the statue in Broad Street of the city's three famous sons with their plans captures the exact moment when Boulton, Watt and Murdoch realised they had built the Rotunda upside down. Every male-chauvinist driver knows that London's statue of Boadicea riding her war chariot with blades on its wheels signifies the heroic refusal of women drivers to learn parallel parking.

AND in Kidderminster there is a striking statue of a Puritan cleric Richard Baxter with one finger raised, presumably in a Puritanically-clerical fashion. These days it just looks rude. And you too, pal.

THANKS for your emails on the burning issue of when middle age begins. So far the consensus seems to be that we have reached middle-age when: Your broad mind and narrow waist change places; you get excited about lawnmowers; your parents and your children cause you equal amounts of worry.

WE dined out with old friends who insisted on paying for everything in a restaurant so posh that the chef came to the table to inquire exactly how I wanted the duck. But the poshest part was the gin course. Once dismissed as mother's ruin, gin has become a very fashionable starter. I had a large Hendrick's with Fever Tree tonic, served in something the size of a goldfish bowl with cucumber slices and rose petals. Beats the soup du jour any day.

CURIOUS, isn't it, how obscure "celebrities" you have never heard of get the full star treatment when they die yet a genuine British hero, the gloriously-skilled wildlife artist David Shepherd, passed away last month with barely a mention in our national media? Talk about ignoring the elephants.

YOU may be surprised or shocked at the news that Rona Fairhead, former chair of the BBC Trust, has been given a life peerage and appointed an international trade minister. Or you may, like me, take the resigned view that the BBC, for all its endless protestations of independence, is actually an extension of the Civil Service. That's why it is the only news organisation in the world that gets £4,000 million a year from the public purse.

STILL with Auntie Beeb, it seems some of her 1930s founding principles are still intact. Reporting the death of the Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, the BBC newsreaders informed us sniffily that his behaviour included "sporting silk pyjamas during the day." Silk pyjamas? Oh, the cad, the bounder.

HEFFNER lived to 91, yet more proof if you need it that only the good die young.