Express & Star

Peter Rhodes on a national treasure, a pompous princess and blank disbelief in Bodyguard

A ghastly specimen or a national treasure?

Published
National Treasure

AS the campaign for a "People's Vote" rattles on, based on the claim that the British public did not understand what Brexit would mean, a reader writes: "I am watching this with interest. I am not 100 per cent sure everything was explained fully at my wedding ceremony 46 years ago."

AND for those of you crying foul at the suggestion that Britain might leave the EU and then change the agreement, look at where the EU is heading, and how it is changing. The Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has been unveiling plans to turn the Union from a mere trading bloc into a sovereign world power. The EU we are leaving is nothing like the Habsburg Empire Mk II the EU will become.

INEVITABLY, Juncker's speech included the old lie "We live on a peaceful continent, made possible by the European Union." Bunkum. Peace in Western Europe was made possible by the sacrifice of Russian and American soldiers and the threat of atomic weapons.

TWIGGY entered her 70th year this week. One tabloid marked her birthday by re-telling the old tale of the formal dinner where the world-famous model was seated next to Princess Margaret, who asked her name. Twiggy replied that her real name was Lesley Hornby "but most people call me Twiggy." Turning away, the princess muttered: "How unfortunate." Two women. One a national treasure, the other a truly ghastly specimen. No prizes.

BODYGUARD (BBC1) reaches its climax on Sunday. The wonder is that it got beyond episode four when David Budd (Richard Madden) tried to commit suicide by putting his gun to his head and pulling the trigger. He survived, we are told, because someone had replaced the live bullets with blanks. Don't try this at home, kids. As any old soldier will tell you, a blank can be just as deadly as the real thing. On day one of my TA recruit course all those years ago, the instructing corporal at Catterick asked for a packet of fags. One lad unwittingly handed his over. The corporal put it on the muzzle of a rifle and fired a blank. Twenty Embassy and the packaging vanished in a huge, fragrant cloud. "And that," said the corporal, as smoking bits of cardboard and tobacco fell on us, "is why you will never, ever fire a blank round directly at anybody." We only needed telling once.

THE world waited for Sir Vince Cable to deliver his much-heralded Lib-Dem Conference speech denouncing Brexiteers for wanting the "erotic spasm" of leaving the EU. Cometh the moment, Cable lost his nerve and blurted out "exotic spresm." So that's it. He's 75 and no matter what he has achieved in the past or does in the future, Sir Vince knows this blooper will haunt him to his obituary, and beyond.

CABLE'S mis-speak doesn't even reach the very low bar I have set for unlikely names of TV detectives: Adverse Camber, Sticker Foxhole, Polgooth St Blazey and so on. Exotic Spresm, private investigator, just doesn't work, does it?