Peter Rhodes: The price of a night with Venus

AFTER the recent puzzle about why submariners wear camouflage combat kit, a reader asks, why do counters at some polling stations wear hi-viz yellow jackets? Maybe it's to protect them from floating voters.

“WE will probably be all right but our grandchildren won't, if we don't take action.” Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies this week on the rise of superbugs caused by over-use of antibiotics.

DAME Sally is even suggesting that, as antibiotics become useless, the latest strain of so-called “super gonorrhea” might be treated by the mediaeval practice of putting mercury in the bladder. We may live to see the reappearance of that grim ditty from 300 years ago: “A night with Venus, a lifetime with mercury.”

WHY is it I cannot look at the word “supergonorrhea” without a mental image of Dick van Dyke as Bert the chimney sweep in Mary Poppins? Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I

“I BELIEVE there is a lot to learn from reading Kapital.” Those are the 11 words that could spell the end of shadow chancellor John McDonnell's political career. His support for Karl Marx's handbook on communism is more than his shadow-cabinet comrades can stomach. A revolt to unseat him is said to be under way. But why? If you don't believe there is a lot to learn from Das Kapital, how can you call yourself a socialist? And are socialists no longer welcome in the Labour Party?

A READER writes: “Historians have revealed that they may have found the location in Suffolk where St Edmund is buried. It is thought to be in the town of Bury St Edmunds. How much do these people earn, and where do I apply for a job?”

IF you believe everything you read in the Sunday papers, tonight's much-hyped screening of King Charles III (BBC2) will cause the Royal Family “deliberate pain” by raking up an old myth about the fatherhood of a certain prince. Frankly, the Windsors come from such a long, convoluted, dubious and disputed series of bloodlines that I doubt if anyone at the Palace gives two hoots. In any case, this latest alleged scandal is nothing compared to the one hinted at in Netflix's royal history The Crown which suggests that the energetic Porchester family genes cropped up in several generations of the British aristocracy. The giveaway, apparently, is a high forehead and having trouble with numbers.

INCIDENTALLY, I expected The Crown to be a terrible Americanised fiction. It is incredibly watchable and, by all accounts, historically accurate. Catch it if you can.

THERE is much talk of Theresa May and the EU haggling over Brexit around the table. That will presumably be a strong and stable table.

A READER asks why there are not more toe-curlingly embarrassing moments on the lines of Diane Abbott's car-crash interview with (appropriately enough), Nick Ferrari. The reason is that such encounters require two rare beasts. The first is a politician who is extremely bad at maths. The second, and much rarer, is a 'ard nosed ex-tabloid 'ack who is rather good at maths. Ferrari's grasp of his 10,000-times table was enviable.