Three rings means Adolf's coming

BREAK out the pith helmets, quartermaster. Prepare an extra large Union Jack We're going back East of Suez, by jingo, with a shiny new naval base at Bahrain. The Empire lives again and it can be only a matter of time before we send a gunboat up the Irrawaddy. Only one snag. I don't remember voting for any of this. Do you?

THE Sun runs a survey denouncing Russell Brand as a hypocrite. The multi-millionaire comedian and revolutionary responds by challenging the Sun with the tweet: "Where d'ya get this stat? Liverpool? Hacking into dead children's phones?" That's telling 'em, Russ. And you'd never find Mr Brand doing anything inappropriate on the telephone, would you?

I WILL not be joining the chorus of complaints about the number of TV repeats over Christmas. Some old stuff is incomparable. What modern comedy can match the clever wordplay and perfect delivery of The Two Ronnies, as seen in the compilation screened a few days ago? Last week's repeat of And Now for Something Completely Different (BBC) was a reminder of the occasional brilliance of the Pythons. Okay, so the much-revered Dead Parrot sketch isn't all that funny but, without it, how could we have had that marvellous closing moment when Michael Palin announces that he never wanted to run a pet shop anyway? He wants to be a lumberjack. He wants to cut down trees, wear high heels, suspenders and a bra. And the rest is hysteria.

AFTER the Two Ronnies sketch on misheard surnames, it occurred to me that somewhere in this big wide world there must really be someone called Noah Vale.

A READER overheard this conversation between a stallholder and an English customer trying to get into the spirit of the Frankfurt Christmas Market in Birmingham by ordering a sausage and mustard in the lingo. Brit: "Eine Bratwurst mit Senf, bitte ." Stallholder: "No point talking like that, mate. I'm from Sedgley."

BERNARD Blakemore, one of the brilliant young radio engineers who helped win the Second World War, has died in his 100th year. He manned the BBC transmitter to ensure Chamberlain's declaration of war was heard throughout the land on September 3, 1939. A few days later he was sent to Bawdsey Manor on the Suffolk coast to work on developing Britain's radar defences. Bernard was a great raconteur and I can almost hear him laughing now as he told me the tale of the top-secret unit's defence plan. If the Germans invaded, the warning signal would be three rings on the field telephone. The women staff would be immediately evacuated on lorries while the men would destroy the radar equipment with hand grenades. One day, to everyone's horror, the phone rang three times. "After a while," Bernard Blakemore recalled, "someone said we'd better answer it. It turned out to be somebody saying the tea trolley was on its way."

MISTS of time department. A few of us were chatting about keeping warm in ye olden days when houses were single-glazed and Jack Frost worked his magic on the inside of your bedroom window. Back then, the paraffin heater was the last bastion against the cold, providing warmth and dampness in equal quantities as the flame flickered through little perforations in the steel case . Before long, there will be none of us left who fell asleep watching tiny lights dancing on the ceiling to the faint, comforting aroma of Esso Blue. There is absolutely no magic in a gas boiler.

A READER who eventually hung up after being kept on hold by a "customer help line" tells me: "I never realised Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was so long."