Peter Rhodes: How many more tinderbox flats?

THE news that more tower blocks have been fitted with flammable cladding changes things. And who knows how many more tinderbox blocks will be uncovered in the days ahead? Just to clarify, if the flammable cladding is in a Conservative-controlled area, it is attempted corporate manslaughter by the sinister forces of global capitalism punishing the proletariat. If the flammable cladding is in a Labour-controlled area, it's an unfortunate oversight.

I DOUBT if there is anyone mean-spirited enough to deny survivors of the Grenfell Tower disaster the right to be re-homed in a smart new apartment in Kensington - even if they had no right to be in this country in the first place. There is an English sense of natural justice that says if someone has been through a terrible ordeal, their sins may be overlooked. So if you find a survivor from the Titanic bobbing about in the frozen north Atlantic, you don't chuck him back in the water simply because he's a stowaway without a ticket. If there are illegal immigrants among the survivors of the London blaze, haven't they paid the price to stay?

BUT the huge task now is to establish who exactly the “survivors” are. It seems some of the Grenfell Tower flats had been illegally sub-let. It would be wicked to assign new luxury homes to tenants who broke the law, sub-let their flats and were living miles away when the inferno erupted.

I AM off to hospital tomorrow for what is variously described as minor, routine and straightforward surgery. Even so, it involves very sharp things being stuck into one's eye. In the pre-op assessment the nurses said my blood pressure seems rather high. Well it would, wouldn't it?

SOME years ago I recklessly volunteered to have only a local anaesthetic for another minor / routine / straightforward operation. In the event, the op lasted over six hours and I got told off by the surgeon for falling asleep. Nodding off under the knife - how cool is that?

AFTER that op, an amiable anaesthetist who had spent the entire six hours talking about golf, said: “This should stop any pain in the near future” and gave me a jab of something warm and exquisitely wonderful. It was a useful reminder that drug abusers do not become smack-heads simply to be wicked but because some drugs make you feel absolutely blissful.

HERE'S to you, Mrs Robinson. This year marks the 50th anniversary of The Graduate in which Dustin Hoffman is seduced by Anne Bancroft but falls for her daughter, Katherine Ross. I will always remember it as being one of the very few films which ended with spontaneous applause from the cinema audience. But then as Benjamin and Elaine flee the church and ride away in the bus, barely looking at each other and overwhelmed by what they have done, what can you do but clap? Do cinemagoers ever applaud these days?

GRADUATE trivia. Anne Bancroft who played Mrs Robinson was actually 35, only six years older than Hoffman - and just eight years older than her screen daughter. Might come in handy at the pub quiz.