Shropshire Star

The end of jokes? Peter Rhodes on Gove's gaffe, driverless cars and a new game of poo sticks

A READER wonders whether the advent of driverless cars means he will be able to pop out to pubs and parties and be conveyed home safely while over the drink-drive limit. I suspect the new law will resemble the old one concerning horse-drawn vehicles. You can be charged with being drunk in charge of a carriage, even if the horse is sober.

Published
Michael Gove

DON'T you hate those headlines that begin "All you need to know about . . ."? I found one declaring: "All you need to know about Catalan independence." Yet it failed to mention a crucial aspect - what is the level of gun ownership in Spain? Thankfully, it turns out to be very low. If this breakaway were happening somewhere like Texas or Arkansas, the morgues would already be full.

YOU may think Michael Gove deserves to be sacked, censured or pressed to death for his tasteless joke about Harvey Weinstein. But if Gove goes, what about his co-accused? Lest we forget - or are misled by carefully edited recordings - Gove was describing the anxiety of being interviewed by John Humphrys on Today (Radio4). The Environment Secretary said: Sometimes, I think coming into the studio with you, John, is a bit like going into Harvey Weinstein's bedroom." For uttering these words, Gove has been accused of trivialising sex offences. So what was the reaction of the Beeb's audience in Wigmore Hall? Was it shock, horror and outrage? No - they roared with laughter.

THE other guest, Lord Neil Kinnock, wasn't outraged either. He laughed and came back with: "John goes way past groping." You see, folks, it was something called a joke. Not a very funny joke, perhaps, but nothing particularly sinister. And if Michael Gove is to be censured then Kinnock must be, too. And so must the audience in the hall. Not to mention the millions listening in the privacy of their own homes who dared to snigger. Comrades, we can never build the New Jerusalem as long as anybody is allowed to laugh at anything. Off with their heads, all of them.

A READER reports a news item showing the importance of punctuation: "The police said the accused had thrown the first punch." Add a couple of commas and you get: "The police, said the accused, had thrown the first punch." And, given that we live in an age when nobody uses commas properly, he's not sure who threw anything, or when.

AFTER last week's item on "taking up the cudgels," a reader says another term which could do with updating is leaving somebody "in the lurch." Without consulting a dictionary, what is a lurch and why should you not leave somebody in it?

BEING of a certain age, I have just received the paraphernalia that the NHS calls the bowel-cancer screening test kit and the rest of us call poo sticks. I won't dwell on the procedure required but I am puzzled by the instruction to keep it out of direct sunlight. As if.