Peter Rhodes on a gender nightmare, the danger of clowns and Withnail and I on the stage

ONE great national company reports that it has spent more than £3 million flying staff around the UK on the grounds that it often cheaper and quicker than going by rail, Which sounds like excellent stewardship of public money. Until you learn that the company in question is Network Rail.

GENDER confusion has always been with us. The mercy was that it was historically very rare. Not any more. Today, thousands of kids are queuing up for puberty-blocking drugs as the first step in changing from one sex to the other. Over the past five years, Britain's only NHS gender clinic for children has seen its number of patients soar from 314 to 2,519. According to a weekend report, some of these children, claiming to be trapped in the wrong body, are suspected of being put under pressure by families and campaigners. Some experts are alarmed how many of these sad young patients are autistic.

THERE are two potential nightmares brewing over gender treatment. The first is clinical, making decisions too quickly and doing little more than turning unhappy boys into unhappy girls, or vice versa. The second is financial, the risk that 10 or 20 years from now the NHS will be forced to pay out billions of pounds to thousands of patients who changed sex, regretted it and blame the system for all their anguish.

WITHNAIL and I, the 1987 black comedy set in the 1960s and starring Richard E Grant as a failing alcoholic actor, is to be produced as a stage play in London later this year. How much of the original script will survive the sensitivities of the 21st century is anybody's guess. Is it possible, in our politically-correct times, to yell "Scrubbers!" at passing schoolgirls?

THE first manned (personned?) mission to Mars may be more than a decade away but Nasa is already thinking about the right mix of crew. For a start, there must be a "joker" or "class clown," the sort who, according to one adviser, "bridge gaps when tensions appear." Well, good luck with that. The snag is that this mission could last two years and the gags and jokery that may seem brilliantly amusing on Day One could irritate the hell out of everybody by Day 500. Go on, pull my finger . . .

MY advice would be for Nasa to reject anybody whose CV includes the self-promoting claim GSOH (Good Sense of humour), as seen on dating websites. If there is one thing more tedious than a GSOH it is a VGSOH which usually means some ghastly nerd who can recite word-perfect the entire Biggus Dickus sketch from Monty Python's Life of Brian. Every night. Night after night. All the bloody way to Mars.

CHANNEL-hopping one lazy evening I dipped into the 007 blockbuster Skyfall and also an animated kids' movie. No contest. For action-packed plot, impossible stunts and all-round entertainment, The Adventures of Tin Tin wins hands-down.