No sympathy for Andrew

MY item on the 30th anniversary of the mobile phone reminds an ex-cop of the happy days when these huge, expensive cellphones were used mainly by the media and criminal gangs. They were also dead easy to intercept, using scanners. He recalls endless hours of listening in on thug-chat which suddenly produced the whispered gem: "Seven, tomorrow night, the post office."

ANOTHER reader shares my sense of wonder at the arrival of mobile phones, all those years ago. They may have been heavy but the freedom they offered was revolutionary. He called his the Magic Brick.

BACK in August I asked, in my cynical old way, whether William Pooley, the Ebola nurse, would feature in the New Year Honours List for risking his life to save the lives of others - "or does he have to sing pop songs, row a boat or ride a bike very fast as well?" In fact Pooley got nothing. Honours went to an actress who can impersonate Cilla Black, a fashion designer who invented the miniskirt 50 years ago, and to Joan Collins, presumably for being Joan Collins for all these years. Fine priorities, eh?

WHEN your life suddenly hits an iceberg, that's when your past behaviour comes back to haunt you. You can't help noticing how little sympathy there is for Prince Andrew, named in an American sex scandal. He has snapped at too many politicians, snarled at too many journalists, sneered at too many who dared to ask legitimate questions. Now, when he needs support, there is little and he has only himself to blame. It is four years since the journalist and historian Max Hastings penned a surgically accurate demolition of the Queen's second son: "Advancing age, far from granting wisdom, has made him ever more reckless in his choice of hosts and associates . . . I do not believe Prince Andrew is a bad man. He is simply an exceptionally foolish one who has exploited his royal privileges in the most crass possible way because nobody has stopped him."

WHILE we're on it, what are the odds against a sex scandal involving a girl called Virginia in the Virgin Islands?

AS you may recall, this column hosted some discussion recently on the subject of lingering flatulence in super-insulated modern homes. A timely tale came from The Food Programme (Radio 4) this week which reminded us of one vegetable to avoid. The 17th century English planter John Goodyer wrote of them: "Which way soever they be dressed and eaten, they stir and cause a filthy loathsome stinking wind within the body, thereby causing the belly to be pained and tormented, and are a meat more fit for swine than men." Jerusalem artichokes, since you ask.

A CURIOUS tale of the electronic age. Spring-cleaning my old car, I found something under the passenger seat, presumably left by the previous owner a couple of years ago. It was a small blue plastic object with four buttons and a little light, attached to a keyring. I was stumped so I Googled the serial number. It turns out to be a gizmo for opening electrically-powered garage doors. As far as I know I didn't open any garage doors in the neighbourhood but Mrs Rhodes reports that, while I was playing with the buttons, our electronic doorbell went off, with a chime she had never heard before. Spooky.

CHOP down laurels. Chop down apple tree. Chop down hydrangeas. Burn the lot in the brazier. Slash, hack, burn, burn, burn. Gardening. It's a man thing. But only in January.