Welcome to Leicester

THE recent item about a four-year-old magazine in a doctor's waiting room prompts one reader to claim he happened across a magazine reporting the Relief of Mafeking. Nice try, sir, but isn't this a line from the late, great Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock?

INTERESTING word, Mafeking. When news reached Britain in 1900 that the besieged South African town had been relieved by British troops, the celebrations were riotous and occasionally unseemly. The town's name became a verb and from that moment, the authorities would warn the crowds against "mafficking" excessively. I believe it passed out of usage in the 1940s but the great thing about this column is that someone always knows better. Always . . . .

VOTE Ukip, get Labour. Vote SNP, get the Tories. This is turning into the General Election of Dark Warnings, the threat that you may be voting for unintended consequences. Most chilling so far is the prospect raised by the Prime Minister's offhand suggestion of potential successors. Vote Dave, get Boris.

THIS is a good time to be a provincial. First, Ye Great Eclipse blazed in magnificence across the Midlands but was totally obscured by cloud in London. Admit it, did you not smile ever so slightly to see so many miffed Londoners?

AND then came the procession, lying-in-state and re-interment of a box of bones formerly known as Richard III. It was a joyously provincial affair, sentimental and sometimes a bit naff (did we really need knights on armoured horses?) but well-intentioned and peculiarly moving. And if you doubted for a moment that the London media elite felt this royal event should have taken place in the capital, you had only to hear Jon Snow's slip of the tongue as he welcomed us to proceedings "here in Westm, er, Leicester."

APART from 453 lives, the war in Afghanistan cost Britain £40,000 million. The idea was to create stability and build a civilised democracy. Did you see the images of 500 Afghan men heroically beating a woman to death for allegedly burning the Koran? Did you hear of the cleric explaining how such punishment could be justified. Money well spent, eh?

THE Budget has failed to provide the Tories with much of a pre-election bounce in the opinion polls. How different things might have been if George Osborne had quietly announced that the bedroom tax was to be scrapped. It has always been a mean-spirited tax, raising little revenue, causing harm and convincing millions of voters that David Cameron still leads the nasty party.

A READER writes: "I was looking at the menu in a restaurant, and was wondering what the 'Jeremy Clarkson Special' was. Then it hit me."

IF you needed proof that there is a committee for every cause, consider the issue of capital punishment in the US state of Utah where the firing squad may soon take over from lethal injections . At times like this the media turn for comments to the Death Penalty Information Centre. Sounds like a jolly place to work.

YOU may recall my online purchase of a shirt which generated no fewer than six emails from the supplier. Make that seven. The "feedback request" has just arrived.