Peter Rhodes on the younger Morse, 100 years of votes for women and the perils of mystery tours

A PARTY of trippers set off on a mystery coach tour from Nottingham a few days ago. It took them to the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke where they found the place closed for refurbishment. The coach operator said : "We should have looked at the website to see if they were open. I wouldn't say people were disappointed, because they didn't know where they were going, so it was all taken in good spirit."

AND it could have been worse. My former colleague, the late, great Gerry Anderson, knew a couple who were born, bred and married in Walsall. They loved Walsall. They rarely left Walsall. But when they had a modest win on the pools they decided to treat themselves to a weekend in London. By Saturday afternoon they'd had enough of London and hopped on a mystery coach trip. It took them to Walsall Arboretum.

IN Endeavour (ITV), Shaun Evans plays the "young" Inspector Morse. As the new series begins, Evans is 37. Inspector Morse was first screened in 1987 when John Thaw (Morse) was 45. Which means Evans has about eight years to successfully morph into somebody resembling John Thaw, or risk being denounced by one of the older Morse's colleagues at Cowley nick. "Hang on, pal. I knew Morse in his 40s and he was nothing like you . . ." Impersonating a police officer, eh?

I SUGGESTED last week that Lord Adonis, arch-critic of Brexit, was a bit of a sneerer. A reader says it's a shame Charles Dickens is no longer around for he would surely have paired Adonis with Tony Blair as a firm of Victorian solicitors: Sneer & Smirk.

LET us all celebrate the struggle of the suffragettes and 100 years of votes for women. Back in 1918 working-class women were at the mercy of men. Today, working-class women are at the mercy of shouty, middle-class women who tell them which careers they may or may not pursue. You want to be a hostess, a boxing-ring sign-holder, a cheerleader or a racing-circuit grid girl? Forget it, sister. Posh ladies will defend their notion of the dignity of womanhood to the last drop of someone else's blood.

IN their day, some extreme Suffragettes were regarded as terrorists. But in Suffragette (Film Four) we saw archive footage of the funeral of Emily Davison who died walking into the path of the King's horse at Epsom in 1913. You couldn't help noticing how many men in the vast crowd removed their hats in respect as her coffin went by.

MY grandmother, owning a small house, was one of the first women to get the vote in the days when there was a property qualification. Not that it made much difference. She was a Liberal in a solidly Tory seat. As she told me shortly before she died in the 1980s: "I've had the vote all these years but I've never voted for the one that got in."