Peter Rhodes: How to have fun with cold callers

THE best fun you can have with a cold caller on the phone is to ask for his password before you can continue the conversation. There is, of course, no password. The mounting confusion, irritation and abuse is a delight. A reader tells me he has extended this innocent gambit to dealing with calls from his own bank.

TALKING of banks, a confession. I joined the Co-Op Bank 20-odd years ago not because it was ethically managed, suffused with compassion and investing heavily in rainforests and Nicaraguan coffee farmers. I joined because its credit card was free of all charges, not only then but for all time. I can't imagine a simpler pledge than "free for life". I wonder how long those three little words will survive this week's takeover by the hedge-fund boys who solemnly promised to maintain the bank's ethical standards, while announcing the first sackings.

THIS time next week the acclaimed RSC production of Richard II at Stratford, starring David Tennant, will be transmitted live to 100 cinemas all over Britain. Livecasts of plays, ballets and festivals are the coming thing, and who can say whether they are for good or ill? Television killed off the music halls and local amateur-drama groups must surely worry about the spread of livecasts. Who's going to sit through the Little Chuffingham Players' mumbled and toe-curlingly embarrassing performance of No Sex Please, We're British once you can get the real thing, live from the West End, beamed into your community hall in word-perfect glory?

INCIDENTALLY, if Tennant looks vaguely familiar in his long Richard II wig, you may be thinking of him in one of his earliest TV appearances. He was Davina, the disturbingly beautiful transvestite barmaid in Rab C Nesbitt whose appearance on Youtube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB-M_tYhLGU) prompted this anguished email from a viewer this week. "David just made me go lesbian."

KENNETH Clarke is blessed with the reasonableness gene. When he opens his mouth, it usually sounds like sweet common sense and Joe Public tends to nod along. A few days ago, Ken Clarke was holding forth on Muslim women wearing veils in court. He's against it, not because he's a racist or an Islamophobe but because it's impossible to judge whether someone is telling the truth if her face is covered. He went on to say that, away from courts, people should be able to wear exactly what they want. This sounded like a golden nugget of Ken-sense that no right-thinking person could deny. Or is it? A little later, we heard about the loonie in Cambridge ("I just live and breathe everything Adolf Hitler") who strode around a supermarket clad as a Nazi SS officer. Then came news of the terrorist suspect in London who walked into a mosque dressed as a man, emerged wearing a full burka and vanished. It seems the absolute freedom to dress as we choose may be a surprisingly complex issue. Beyond our Ken, so to speak.

BEST headline on the SS officer in the supermarket was "Sieg aisle!" (Daily Mail).

MY abiding memory of Ken Clarke was during the last General Election campaign when he dropped in at the office for a buffet lunch and chat. In my limited experience, politicians in public tend to peck politely at food, as though they fear getting the bill. Ken Clarke waded into those sausage rolls and mini pork pies like a starving man.

MIND you, Shakespeare liked his politicians on the plump side. As Julius Caesar puts it: "Let me have men about me that are fat." The thin ones, according to the Bard, thought too much and were dangerous. The House of Commons looks a safe place. Especially the Tory benches.