Peter Rhodes on the killer weed, a brilliant writer and a ready-made new National Anthem

ACCORDING to the society magazine Tatler, the perfect dinner-party host should allow guests to smoke at the table. I can't remember the last time I saw anybody light up in someone else's house. Smoking is dying. The last thing we need is to make it socially acceptable again.

STILL on smokers, I'd like to say I'm enjoying A A Gill's essays on America, The Golden Door. But how can you enjoy them without reflecting on what a massive loss he is? Gill, one of the most gifted observers and writers of his age, died of a smoking-related cancer in December 2016 aged just 62. Who knows what wonders he might have gone on to write, what unconsidered trifles he might have dragged into the daylight? Among a thousand snippets in The Golden Door is the curious fact that when the Yanks began experimenting with the electric chair, supposedly the humane, all-American alternative to the European barbarism of guillotines and gallows, they first set up the Electric Death Commission. Priceless.

THIS week's centenary of Votes for Women has been accompanied by much playing of the Suffragettes' song March of the Women by Ethel Mary Smyth. From time to time we moan about our dirge-like National Anthem. Well, here's a ready-made replacement, although some of Cicely Hamilton's lyrics might need changing. "Cry with the wind, for the dawn is breaking" sounds like a medical condition but you can't argue with the splendour of: "Open your eyes to the blaze of day."

ADVICE to balaclava-wearing urban warriors considering squaring up to the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg. Don't. Rees-Mogg, who confronted a bunch of offensive protestors at a university debate, says he is an utter weed. I am reminded of the weedy public school boy who was on a farm-management course I attended many years ago. He was the only one of us with a car and one night another student, a big, tough rocker with a fringed leather jacket, said it would be a big laff to steal the weedy kid's car for a joyride. He (the rocker) turned up for breakfast the next morning with a bloody nose and a black eye. Turned out the weedy kid, who had caught him in the act, was the all-England public schools flyweight champion. They may look inoffensive but a lot of public school boys do something the rest of us never do. Boxing.

FOURTEEN 'disgusted and shocked' young ladies at Stratford Girls' Grammar School have written to their local newspapers condemning their MP, the minister for children and families Nadhim Zahawi, for attending the notorious Presidents Club. They allege young women at last month's event were treated as objects 'solely for the entertainment and benefit of the men'. The girls' arguments are feisty and mature but it was their names that caught my eye. Years from now, social historians will see them as a snapshot of monikers chosen by aspirational parents in the early 21st century: Autumn, Natasha, Olivia, Lily, Riana, Taegen, Maya, Alice, Anisha, Theo, Georgina, Amber, Lily and Lizzy.

INCIDENTALLY, what does Stratford Girls' Grammar School have that the Presidents Club does not have? An apostrophe. And class.