Columns

I will only ‘Think Bike’ if the bikers can be persuaded to ‘Think Motorist’ ‘29 BIKERS KILLED OR INJURED IN THE LAST 5 YEARS’, says the big yellow roadside sign as I drive along the A515 between Ashbourne and Buxton, on my way to this week’s Tory conference in Manchester. The sign is repeated many times along the old Roman road. It is rather shocking. ‘THINK BIKE’, says another sign, presumably directed at motorists. ‘50’ says the speed limit sign, endlessly repeated, both painted onto the road and displayed on steel poles by the side of it. ‘IT’S 50 FOR A REASON’, say yet another series of signs. And then ‘ACCIDENT ZONE’.

I’m thrilled to the core by the magnificent tribe whose talents shine the world over There’s something about a flesh-and-blood entertainer doing his nut in front of a flesh-and-blood audience that thrills me to the core. I’ve no idea why. Maybe because my great-grandfather was a pantomime dame. Maybe because I’m a far-flung twig on the Littler family tree — the dynasty that includes Emile and Prince Littler, impresarios who dominated music hall and pantomime in the first half of the last century. Whatever the reason, and despite (perhaps because of?

RIP, then, Marcus the sheep. That’s ‘P’ as a plural in this case, obviously. As in ‘pieces’, and lots of them. Are any of the legs still going spare? Mmm. Love a bit of shank. Marcus, as you’ll have doubtless read, was a sheep reared at Lydd Primary School in Romney Marsh who was then sent off, as is the basic idea with sheep, for slaughter and butchery. All sorts of people were very upset about this. Not the children, it must be said, because they had a vote on this, and they did not choose life. Maybe not even Marcus himself, who by all accounts was a rather stoic and passive individual, because he was a sheep. No, it was mainly parents, who presumably preferred their meat to come in packets.

It’s the coal station workers who make the planet worth saving Not that long ago, for an article that never quite happened, I took a tour around Kingsnorth power station. This was just after environmental activists had staged a week-long ‘Climate Camp’ there. ‘Environmentalist?’ said my taxi-driver. ‘Journalist,’ I told him. He seemed surprised. Such is my debonair professional demeanour. He’d done quite well out of climate change activists, it turned out. It was seven miles from the train station to the power station, and cannabis and hand-woven teepees can really weigh you down. If no one was looking, or if it was raining, they’d often sneak a lift.

Why at a Ryanair check-in is there always somebody weeping? In this case, at Girona airport in Catalonia last week, she was a respectable, grandma-aged German lady in a white cotton-and-lace blouse. She was standing by the counter where you have to pay extra (only cash accepted) if you didn’t tick the right box for a checked-in suitcase when completing your online ticket purchase; or buy another flight at maximum price if you turned up one minute late for the flight you were supposed to be on. I was in the first category: I had hold luggage, and was stung for E20 extra, which was bearable. Whatever the weeping lady had been stung for, however, was not. She was sobbing uncontrollably while other passengers (including me) shuffled past, helpless and embarrassed.

If the NHS is ‘fair’, give me unfairness any day Did I ever tell you about the time the National Health Service relieved me of my piles? It’s a painful story — and for many of you, no doubt, already far, far more information than you want. But I do think it goes a long way towards explaining our ongoing Eloi-like subservience to the great, slobbering, brutish NHS Morlock which we so rose-tintedly delude ourselves is still the ‘Envy of the World’. Look, if you don’t want to read about piles (‘’roids’ if you’re American), I should skip on a few pars. The key thing to recognise is that from tiny beginnings, they mutate into an all-consuming misery. Enjoying a night in front of the TV? Yeah, but the piles!

‘Father of three drowns in Welsh holiday tragedy’. This was the news-in-brief headline you nearly read last week. The father in question would have been me. Like all such incidents it came completely out of the blue. This is a thing I’ve noticed: you never wake up that morning with a spooky feeling of impending doom. One minute you’re carrying on as most of us do: as if we’re immortal or, at the very least, guaranteed to live to a very ripe old age. And the next: ‘Whooah! If it isn’t the Grim Reaper, hovering above me with his sickle!

I was lucky last Saturday at 10.30 to become a West Country pioneer. For some years the Conservative party has been experimenting with open primaries for the selection of their prospective parliamentary candidates. I’ve acted as ringmaster for a few of these, supplementing questions from the floor with my own: a sub-Dimbleby figure, putting them through their political paces. Whatever the theoretical objections, the idea has in practice worked well — tending to discourage candidates from pandering only to the solid Tory core. But these meetings, typically attended by no more than a few hundred people, could in theory easily be ‘packed’. They still feel a narrow base for so important a selection.