Peter Rhodes: At last!
Peter Rhodes on the rediscovery of a much-loved show, a police inquiry in difficulties and the continuing quest for a death ray.
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THE less good news is the realisation that the show's glamour content, "The Lovely Aimi MacDonald," is now 73. Where do the years go?
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AIMI was the presenter between sketches who, in one 1948 Show, uttered the words: "And now for something completely different." And the rest is hysteria.
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THE Royal Navy is working on a death ray to knock enemy warplanes out of the sky with a beam of concentrated energy. This is a tale which could have come straight out of the 1930s when British politicians invested heavily in some amazing device the boffins were working on. Whitehall was hoping for a death ray but it proved a non-starter. What the scientists actually came up with was something called radio detection finding, better known as radar. It wasn't a death ray but it still won the war.
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OPERATION Midland, the police inquiry into alleged murders by highly-placed paedophiles, is reported to be in difficulties. It is based largely on the evidence of one alleged victim, known as "Nick". His startling claim is that he was abused by VIPs at paedophile parties from the age of seven and that three boys were killed. Now, it is alleged, police are not so confident about his testimony. These are monstrous allegations and must be fully investigated, no matter how long it takes. But I find myself wondering if at any stage in this big and ruinously expensive inquiry, "Nick" has been invited to take a lie-detector test.
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ARE you not driven mad by the new generation of pop-up video ads on your computer? In my continuing quest to understand this world a little better, I clicked on to a news report on the Guardian website headlined: "UK Jewish leaders seek clarification on Jeremy Corbyn's policies." After a few seconds of serious reading about Zionism, up pops bonkers Barry Scott at his shouty worst, trying to sell me a bottle of Cillit Bang.
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TIM Farron says that since the Labour leadership election result, he has been contacted by Labour politicians who are "distraught" by Jeremy Corbyn's win and may join Farron's party. Now the tricky questions. Who is Tim Farron? Which party does he lead? The answer is that he is the leader of the Lib-Dems, the party annihilated in the last general election. What sort of desperate no-hoper would want to join them?
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AMAZING predictions department. "The chances are that neither Jack Straw nor Malcolm Rifkind actually committed any breach of the regulations serious enough to cause them much trouble. In due course, will anyone be surprised to see Messrs Rifkind and Straw in the Lords?" From this column, February 11.
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THE Twitter account Highgate Mums has published a list of utterances by posh kids. I like this one: "Mummy, I only like the falafels with an egg in them." Which is actually a posh kid letting the world know that he enjoys Scotch eggs. Dammit, Tarquin, after all we've spent on his education.
