Best of Peter Rhodes - September 3

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

A THINK-tank says residents should be paid money to vote for new housing developments in local ballots. Meanwhile, back at the cricket . . . .

IT is reported that Sunday's final episode of Last of the Summer Wine attracted 5.4 million viewers instead of the usual three million. This means about 2.4 million of us were reminded why we stopped watching it years ago. What a pile of old tosh it was.

THE wonders of modern medicine. When Richard Clutterbuck, 57, was hurt in a riding accident he was airlifted to University Hospital, Coventry, with spinal damage. In a pioneering operation, cement was injected into his back and he was fit to go home the next day. I have reason to believe that cement repairs have been around for some time - but only for very senior army officers. I bought a small readymix bag of mortar at the weekend. It claims to be good for "pointing, patching and general repairs."

IF you've even been to China, you'll know the food is distinctly different from the chow mein you get in your local Chinese restaurant. So what is the secret of that indefinable authentic piquancy? A report from Beijing this week reveals that 10 per cent of oil used in cooking has been recovered from sewers. Dumplings, anyone?

FROM the moment I first met Tony Blair in April 1994, one word stuck in my mind: shifty. I have never changed that view. However, I can report today that at long last, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair and I agree on something. As his new book, A Journey, confirms, Gordon Brown is a very strange person indeed.

A READER wonders if anyone can explain why so many dentists these days are listed in Yellow Pages as Doctor. Now I think of it, why are so many mad women with metal hooks described as dental hygienists?

THE end of alcohol? My spies in Germany tell me that alcohol-free beer is the new big thing. The Germans take their beer seriously and are passionate about the trace elements and minerals it contains, but less keen on the calories and alcohol. A new generation of zero-alcohol beers and lagers are the drink of choice at parties. You can even get alcohol-free wheat beer, that intriguing, heady stuff with the cloudy residue. The Germans are not alone. All across Europe, alcohol is steadily falling out of fashion. But no-one has told the Brits.

OUR changing language. Abbey Johnstone who won a split-second of fame by punching her singing partner on X Factor, tells the world: "I have anger issues."

"Issues" have acquired semi-medical status and having them means you don't have to apologise. These days you can break wind on the bus and announce: "I have flatulence issues." I saw a lad in Birmingham on Sunday morning throwing up outside the Mailbox. He looked like a hungover little prat but I dare say he has vomiting issues.

RICHARD Briers is one of the pleasantest actors I've ever interviewed, as happy to chat about his tax affairs as about the plot of his latest play. When we met in Birmingham 20 years ago he was well known as the voice of instant coffee and declared cheerfully: " You can't knock the commercials. One Nescafe ad pays my tax for the year." This week he warns us that reality television is killing off drama. He is right. An alarming number of folk are content to be force-fed an endless diet of cookery shows, talent contests and dodgy todgers parading as serious medical programmes. It is surprising that no-one has brought these three threads together and given us people with embarrassing growths tossing pancakes to music. We have, in every possible sense, lost The Good Life.

A READER asks whether exit signs are on the way out.

WHY do so many Americans (one in six according to this week's poll) believe, against all the evidence, that their president is a Muslim? Probably for the same reason that so many of them believe the moon landings were faked, flying saucers landed at Roswell, Elvis lives and the world is entering the End of Days as foretold in the Bible. Blame America's appalling school system. When people don't know anything, they believe anything.

I TURNED to the website of the Catholic Herald for the latest on this month's Papal visit, expecting to find the faithful bursting with enthusiasm. Not all of them, it seems. One worshipper rages against: "The gross incompetence of the bishops to organise even a ****-up in a brewery."

That'll be an awful lot of Hail Marys at Confession.

JUST as some Germans get nostalgic for the good old days of the communist German Democratic Republic, so some Chinese positively yearn for the firm government, stern discipline and firing squads of Chairman Mao's days. This explains the first "Red Games," held recently in Shandong province to celebrate the revolutionary skills of throwing hand grenades, storming the enemy's blockhouse and the 50-metre dash through minefields. Imagine Total Wipeout with barbed wire and no-one laughing, and you've got it. Last one to invade Taiwan is a lickspittle capitalist running dog. On your Marx . . .

FOREIGN Secretary William Hague says Britain must have a foreign policy "with a conscience." This sounds not unlike the "ethical foreign policy" Tony Blair announced, just before we invaded Iraq.

AFTER two rottweilers savaged a 10-year-old girl in Dundee, the owner said he had believed the dogs to be gentle. If you want gentle dogs, why buy a pair of rottweilers?