Express & Star

Peter Rhodes on lucky suits, old jokes - and the beginning of the end of a dream?

Read today's column from Peter Rhodes.

Published
Not so lucky, Martin?

I REFERRED recently to the annual winter-illness survey conducted by Fisherman's Friend. Before my usual coterie of ancient-gag tellers reach for their keyboards, yes, I have heard the joke about the bloke up before the magistrates and the Fisherman's Friend.

DURING the siege of Sarajevo in 1992, I stepped off the first RAF Hercules to fly into the city's airport and into a small, drab crowd of well wishers. Drab made sense, whether it was the drab combat kit of the Nato soldiers or the drab green flak jackets worn by us hacks. But there was one notable un-drab exception. There, bright as an angel on the runway and the perfect target for any bored sniper, was the BBC's Martin Bell in his "lucky" white suit. Seeing him, I wrote one word in my notebook: "Clot." Later in the conflict, Bell was wounded, live in mid-dispatch, in his "lucky" white suit. A few weeks ago, still in that trademark suit, he tripped and fell headlong at Gatwick, smashing his face so badly that it had to be rebuilt by surgeons. At 80, bruised but unbowed, he still sings the praises of that suit. Maybe it's too late to change his ways but after one shooting and one catastrophic fall, might it not be time at least to experiment with beige?

MIND you, wearing white at 80 is the mark of a man in remarkably fine shape. There are good reasons why many chaps avoid light-coloured trousers after middle-age. As any urologist will tell you.

WHAT does the Government do when vehicle pollution in our major cities regularly exceeds legal limits and is reckoned to be killing tens of thousands of people, and no-one has a clue how to stop it? Simple. Whitehall issues a press release about clamping down on emissions from wood-burning stoves. Suddenly, all the news websites and papers are full of features on stoves ("Hands off my wood burning stoves, Mr Gove!" Daily Telegraph, etc) and no-one's talking about traffic fumes. Magicians call it distraction.

AFTER this week's Commons' vote against Theresa May's EU deal, we may be seeing the beginning of the end of the Brexit dream. There is an old military saying: "No plan survives first contact with the enemy." In the case of leaving the EU, the enemy was not so much Brussels but our own House of Commons. How can a Leave vote hope to survive in a House stuffed with Remainer MPs? It was like handing a lamb over to a pack of jackals.

TODAY, I looked back at the column I wrote on that glad day in June 2016 when the results came in and Brexit triumphed. I wrote then: "Right from the outset, we must be aware that there are dark forces at work to prevent us from quitting the EU. " I was right about that. But I also wrote: "Rejoice, for we still live in a working democracy" and I'm no longer sure about that.