Express & Star

Peter Rhodes on late news, dangerous awards and Barbara Windsor's bravest hour

A READER recalls that when she was a girl and asking endless questions a family friend would identify any unknown item with: "It's a nose-band for a goose's bridle." Which reminded me of the old mechanic who would answer my queries about engine parts with: "It's a wim-wam for a smoke-grinding mill." Have such terms been lost in the drains of history? Have new ones replaced them?

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Barbara - Queen of Bingo

BARBARA Windsor, slowly slipping into the fog of dementia, emerges to front the Dementia Revolution campaign, aiming to raise millions towards fighting this wretched disease. Good luck to her and well done for bringing her brand of working-class Cockney optimism to the campaign. I wonder if she regrets bringing that same chirpy persona to the dubious business of advertising internet gambling. Barbara Windsor dressed up as the "Queen of Bingo" to tempt suckers into staking their money online. Her appearance for Dementia Revolution came within a few days of Kenny Alexander, the boss of Britain's biggest gambling company, admitting that online games can be "dangerous and destructive." He said: "Many of those in rehab centres have lost their wives, they have lost their families, they've lost their money and many have lost all hope." Sounds like Alzheimer's, doesn't it?

GREAT dramas of our time. Fiona Bruce was due to read the BBC News at 6pm but was stuck in a traffic jam in London. Thankfully, she got a lift in a police car and made it with minutes to spare. Just think of the appalling consequences if Miss Bruce had not got there in time. Somebody else would have read the news instead. Phew.

THE Islamic Human Rights Commission will soon make its annual Islamophobes of the Year Awards. Dozens of hapless individuals, plus the entire Conservative Party, have been nominated for the awards on November 11. IHRC says it's just a bit of "fun and satire." Three years ago a spokesman called it "a tongue-in-cheek swipe at those in public life who have perpetrated or perpetuated acts of hatred against Muslims and their faith." That was the year the award went to Charlie Hebdo, the French magazine where, two months earlier, 12 members of staff were massacred in a terror attack. Can't honestly say I see the fun or satire in that. And whatever the organisers think, what if some loonie decides the winner of this poisoned-chalice award is insulting Islam and therefore deserves to die? Where does "fun and satire" end and incitement begin?

NIGELLA Lawson posted a photo of a scone with black treacle on top of cream. This instantly sparked the old argument about whether the cream should go directly on the scone or be plonked on the jam, treacle or whatever. How blessed we are to live in a country where we have time to worry about such things.

AND while we English love bickering about kitchen trivia, we know, deep in our furry arteries and failing hearts, that the real issue is not jam-first scones or cream-first scones. It is too many scones.