Peter Rhodes on middle names, dirty money and bidding farewell to the wetsuit

VICTORIA Beckham was said to be "mortified" after mistaking Thandie Newton for Zoe Saldana. I sympathise. As I admitted recently, in the blood-and-guts epic The Revenant, I had great difficulty telling Leonardo DiCaprio from the grizzly bear. The Misses Newton and Saldana? I'm sorry, I haven't a clue.

THE problem is that there are simply so many celebrities today. I've just put down a newspaper supplement with a double-page spread of alleged showbiz stars. Didn't recognise a single one of them. It seems those whose names are preceded by "reality star" are, in reality, not stars at all.

IF nothing else, the arrival of the new Duchess of Sussex is a reminder that we're not all known by our first names. Many of us, for reasons of family tradition, personal choice or the demands of showbiz, are known by a middle name. Thus, the Duchess is Rachel Meghan Markle in much the way that the US megastar is William Bradley Pitt, the former Beatle is James Paul McCartney and the "Rivers of Blood" MP was John Enoch Powell.

A USEFUL thing about being known by your middle name is that you can use your first name on official documents. And that means that when an envelope arrives addressed to William Pitt or James McCartney, you know it's not from a friend.

I WAS once accused by an online car-insurance salesman of some sort of fraud by applying for a policy in my first name when I clearly answered to another name. He worked for a company which recorded all phone calls. A few days later they told me he had been taken away for re-education. Stalin (not his birth name) would have approved.

YOU may get a glow of satisfaction about Russian oligarchs being called to account by UK authorities and made to explain how and when they acquired their riches. But remember this. A quarter of all the income tax paid in Britain is paid by the richest one per cent of income-tax payers. While a moral crusade is heart-warming, dirty money is still money and it may be that the best way to fund the NHS is to look the other way.

ACCORDING to the Sunday Times, rising ocean temperatures may soon make wetsuits obsolete in the seas around Britain. Excellent news. Unless you have a perfect body, the black-rubber wetsuit is the most unkind and unforgiving item of clothing. I saw a woman on Loch Lomond mounting her jetski, a vehicle which emits a powerful jet of cooling water from its back end. She was a large lass, clad in a wetsuit, straddling the saddle with her ample bum in the air and a jet of water shooting up between her legs. It was unforgettable, and not in a good way, and yet from her satisfied smile, she obviously thought she looked like a Bond girl. If the wetsuit passes into history, global warming will have done some good.