Peter Rhodes on offensive telly, free prescriptions and no shortage of cops on race days

I WROTE yesterday about how some fashionable celebrities can get away with almost anything while others are pounced upon the moment they say or do anything questionable. Consider that edgy, right-on comedy programme The Mash Report (BBC2), presented by Nish Kumar, which recently contained a spoof advert for a commemorative painted plate to mark Brexit - featuring a picture of a dead diabetic.

I WOULD have thought this was so grossly offensive that the web would have thundered with rage. Not a bit of it. Maybe diabetics don't take offence. Maybe nobody watches The Mash Report. Or maybe we have reached that stage of defeatism where people believe that, if you're dealing with something edgy and right-on from the BBC, there really is no point in complaining.

AND I doubt if anyone at the Beeb sees a problem. After all, the joke was anti-Brexit, so that's all that matters. As the BBC's veteran interrogator John Humphrys points out on his retirement, the BBC is a place which claims to celebrate diversity in absolutely everything - except diversity of opinion.

THE significance of the dead-diabetic image is the long-running threat that Brexit will create shortages of food and medicines. Given that politicians do not like being associated with mass murder, I wouldn't mind betting that there are more life-saving medicines stockpiled in Britain today than at any time in our history. Right next to the baked beans.

POLICE in Bedfordshire say they will not investigate bicycle thefts, except in cases of "prolific offenders or vulnerable owners." In other words, as a general rule if your bike is nicked, you can whistle for it. And if one force leads the way, look out for other constabularies following. How odd, then, that during the recent OVO Energy Tour of Britain, there seemed no shortage of cops to monitor the cyclists and their machines. As one reader told me: "I have honestly never seen so many police motorcyclists in one place."

THE biggest whopper told about the NHS is that it is "free from the cradle to the grave." No, it isn't. Not if you need spectacles. Or a filling. Or residential care. Or even a prescription. God knows how much it would cost to make it genuinely free but we could start with implementing Labour's plan for free prescriptions in England on one condition - slash the number of prescriptions. We are a grossly over-medicated nation. Millions of Brits are popping handfuls of prescription pills every day, some of which have simply been added to early prescriptions.

SO by all means let's get rid of prescription charges (and all the lying, fraud and prosecutions they create). But first, let every patient have a proper, updated review of their actual drug needs. Free prescriptions - but half the number of prescriptions. It's not the catchiest battle cry but it's a good start.