Peter Rhodes: Flesh and whimsy

MY thanks to the reader who thinks male midwives should be midhusbands. Why not midspouses?

I ASSUME that somewhere there's an academy where meteorologists dream up new weather-forecasting terms. What else could account for expressions such as organised rain, useful weather and spits and spots? At the weekend we were informed that a low-pressure area forming a tight circle was “a dartboard low.”

BOATY McBoatface was rejected as the name for a British research vessel. In Sweden, however, there is clearly a place for whimsy. After a public vote a new locomotive is to be named Trainy McTrainface. There is life is the old gag yet.

WHICH reminds me that as more acres of flesh are exposed in the Scottish time-travel saga Outlander (More 4), I find myself thinking of it as Flicky McSkinflick.

PRESIDENT Trump's new media chief, Anthony Scaramucci, is said to have no media experience. So what are Scaramucci's talents? Can he do the fandango?

REALITY check, Auntie Beeb. As “underpaid” presenters at the BBC campaign for equal pay, the key question goes unanswered – what are the hourly rates? If Star A is paid £400,000 in one particular year and Star B gets £100,000, could it be because Star A works four times as long? Without knowing the hourly rate, we know nothing.

AND even if gross inequality is exposed and admitted, what happens next? The BBC is hardly going to cut the salaries of its superstars and risk losing them. And if it hikes the rates for the lower-paid, we all know the demand that will follow – what about the back pay? Those earning a pitiful £200,000 a year will expect not only a massive pay rise but recompense for all the years they were paid less than their top-flight colleagues. In the famous equal-pay case at Birmingham City Council, some of the thousands of claims went back 17 years. So the Beeb's compensation payments could run into millions. And all the bills would have to be met by TV licence payers in a country where the average household income is about £27,000. Fairness? Equality? Oh, please.

AS the centenary of the ghastly battle of Passchendaele approaches, PM (Radio 4) tracked down 19-year-old Ella Passchendaele Maton-Cole. She is one of the few remaining people named after the great conflict. It's a family tradition and she hopes the name Passchendaele will be passed on to future generations. Good luck with that. I always hoped my great-grandfather's first name would reappear somewhere among my own descendants. He was Bright Laycock, named by his Liberal parents after the great Victorian reformer John Bright. But 150 years on, who's going to saddle a little boy or girl with Bright?

EXCUSES for obesity. My thanks to the reader for the suggestion: “I've got an overactive deep-fat fryer.” More of the same welcome.