Best of Peter Rhodes - August 20

The best of this week's Peter Rhodes column from the Express & Star.

MEDICAL-based definitions for our time:

* Lymph. To walk unsteadily

* Microbes. Small dressing gowns

WE columnists who attempt to weave the stuff of life into something vaguely amusing face some stiff competition from the news columns. A reader sends this message: "There was a report on Tuesday about some bloke threatening to jump off a railway bridge. They sent along 34 cops, four of them armed, two police dogs and two helicopters. I haven't laughed so much in ages. Much funnier than your column."

THE leader of Australia's Labor party, Welsh-born Julia Gillard, says that when the Queen dies it would be "the appropriate time" for Oz to become a republic. Some Australians genuinely believe this is a huge issue of pride for us Brits. Some of them, I grieve to report, think that abandoning the Crown would be a fair dinkum way of sticking two fingers up at those whinging Poms. So let us spell it out once again for the benefit of our friends Down Under. Most of us Brits don't even know what a republic is. Some of us thought Australia already was one. And frankly we don't give a dingo's dungpile what you do, so long as you keep sending the lager. Incidentally, why can't you lot spell Labour properly?