Peter Rhodes: We should have sold the 2012 Olympics

FANCY an autumnal fungi hunt? A contributor to the latest Private Eye makes the sound and seasonal point that while all mushrooms are edible, some are only eaten once.

I EXPECT to be stoned to death in public for disrespecting a national treasure but from what we have seen and heard so far of the new movie The Lady in the Van, am I the only one who thinks it looks like yet another performance in which Maggie Smith plays Maggie Smith?

ON the subject of vans, some display the anti-theft message: "No power tools left on board." A reader spotted a plaintive variation on the back of a decorator's van: "I don't even own any power tools."

YOU may recall in 2005 that when London beat Paris to stage the 2012 Olympics, my advice was to invite Paris to buy the games off us. That way, the UK would make a huge profit, our boys and girls would at least get a trip abroad and the French would get all the hassle. Instead, London got the Olympics, the Russians got the medals and Seb Coe is now getting all the hassle.

A READER fresh back from a driver-awareness course tells me he learned two things. Firstly, the speed limit on dual carriageways is generally 70mph, not 60mph as he thought. Secondly, the gantry speed lights on motorways are only a recommendation, not mandatory. In short, he says, "the speed-awareness course actually made me aware of when I can go faster."

ANOTHER reader growls: "These driver-awareness courses can't be that good. I've just been on my second."

WHY do so many Chinese, Asian and other ethnic-minority kids go to university and so few white British kids, as revealed in this week's survey by the Institute for Fiscal Studies? I have a personal theory that the people who work hardest and strive the most for success are those who have at least one relative who can remember a famine. I wonder how many of today's eager Asian and Chinese graduates have a grandmother who knows what it's like to go hungry. The last famine in England was in 1649, way beyond our race-memory.

A NUMBER of you have emailed to say, half-way through November, you're already sick of Xmas adverts. That's because you are sweet, sentimental old things who cling to the belief that Christmas is a sacred event towards the end of December. It is actually a three-month festival, encompassing Diwali, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Putting the Clocks Back. It ends on December 25 and is followed by Boxing Day, when we all start wearing our poppies again, and New Year's Eve when we make ourselves sick with Easter eggs.

THANKSGIVING in the above list is not an accident. The American celebration of liberty, survival and enormous turkeys in November is taking off in Britain, just as Halloween did, because it is yet another opportunity for doing what both Yanks and Brits enjoy most. Eating until it hurts.

BRITSGIVING, as the imported feast is sometimes known, is an opportunity to celebrate America when it was at its best, still under British rule, still paying its taxes and still on friendly terms with the local tribes, before George Washington spoiled everything. Happy days.