Peter Rhodes with a racist joke, the origins of the chainsaw and why that Fabergé jewel is not for sale

SPOT the Downton-anachronism moment in The Durrells (ITV)? Downton Abbey had a tendency to slip 21st century slang (remember the 'steep learning curve?') into 1920s drama. The Durrells, which has improved enormously since I last watched it, gave us Larry (Josh O'Connor) describing something as 'like leaving a cat in charge of a chainsaw'. A chainsaw in 1930s Corfu?

YOU will be thrilled to learn that the first portable chainsaw for felling trees was patented in 1918, so Larry may have been in order. You may shudder to learn that a 'chainsaw-like device' was invented nearly 100 years earlier, for use in difficult childbirth. Don't ask.

THE 'discovery' of a regimental jewel on Antiques Roadshow had been so well aired in advance that Sunday's programme in which the piece by Carl Fabergé was valued at £1 million, was a bit of an anti-climax. Nor did they tell us the real reason that this jewel, presented to the Queen's Own Worcestershire Hussars in 1904 to mark their service in the Boer War, has suddenly become worth so much (I heard a couple of years ago that it had been 'informally' valued at £2 million). Why the Fabergé frenzy? It is because the likeliest buyer for a glorious Russian-made piece like this would be one of those multi-billionaire Russian oligarchs living in vast mansions in London, and eager to please his president. You see the developing nightmare? If this jewel were sold it might one day reappear in front of Vladimir Putin on a dining table in Moscow at a KGB reunion. And that would clearly never do.

THIS column ends with a racist joke. You may wish to sit down with your smelling salts handy.

ROD Liddle, the columnist, is in hot water for suggesting that a) the second bridge across the Severn connects Wales to 'the first world', implying that Wales is Third World, and b) those Welsh who do not want it naming after the Prince of Wales would 'prefer it to be called something indecipherable with no real vowels, such as Ysgythysgymlngwchgwch Bryggy'. Liddle has been reported to the Independent Press Standards Organisation - which dismissed the complaints. A Welsh MP has denounced his 'attempts to belittle the Welsh language'. I always thought the chief delight of the United Kingdom was as a little haven where four grown-up nations could take the mickey out of each other without being denounced to the censors. If the English cannot poke fun at the Welsh, or the Scots are forbidden from doing silly-arse English accents, what hope is there? Anyway, here's the joke. If it makes you smile, you're a racist.

ON the sixth day God created Scotland. St Peter was amazed. "Lord," he gasped, "Why have you heaped so many riches on one tiny country? The scenery, the wildlife, the natural resources, the lochs, the mountains, the blue, blue skies. Is it not too much, too wonderful?" And the Lord smiled and said: "Wait until you see the neighbours."