I DON'T have a lot of good to say about Gordon Brown but thank you, you grumbly old Bagpuss, for not letting that Tony Blair hustle us into the euro when you were chancellor. It's down to you we still have sterling at all, so maybe your portrait should be chosen for the back of the forthcoming new £50 note.

A lot of the “Bond girls” such as Pussy and Vesper Lynd were strong, vengeful valkyries with their own initiative, who were an alpha female match to Bond’s alpha male.

My improved mouse trap played a gloating recorded message: “Got you, you little b*****!”.

Sorbet magazine friendship issue. Hell is other people. So why have you got them on speed-dial?

That would usefully remind us that “the innocent have nothing to fear” but “innocent” can be redefined at any time.

With snow, high winds and thin air, Mount Everest is a health and safety nightmare. It's all sat maps and oxygen today, but go back to the 1800s and it was just man versus mountain.

Get into a hammock and you’ll feel the yammering, target-driven world go away like a mad preacher moving down your train to the next carriage.

EVERY year Webster’s, Collins and other big, swinging dictionaries announce tiresome new words such as vaping, twerking and Bitcoin. Yawn.

Elderly Marian Webster cut up her neighbours’ flowerbeds with secateurs, believing they had trained a squirrel to vandalize her garden at night.

WE’RE truly house trained citizens now, aren’t we? It was contemptible when you look at Britain’s history of rough-and tumble public meetings.

Divorce lawyers cannot legally offer a "no win, no fee" service. Instead they work on a strict "no pain, no gain" basis.

I always had more time for Goldfinger than James Bond as he creeps around the world like a homicidal school-prefect.