Peter Rhodes on the radiant Kate, the TSB disaster and a unique tale from D-Day

THE BBC describes a breakthrough in laboratory-grown food as "the veggie burger that bleeds when you cut it." Coming soon - mushrooms that scream when you peel 'em.

THE Duchess of Cambridge appears outside the clinic with her newborn prince and is rapped by one tabloid for looking "too perfect." How can normal mums, with no nannies or hairdressers on call, expect to look so lovely? Listen. As any David Icke fan and conspiracy theorist knows, the Windsors are not humans but giant, shape-shifting lizards. We should be thankful that Kate merely looked radiant and did not come down the clinic steps as a rampaging komodo dragon clutching a large egg.

TALKING of giant lizards, I was skinning a brontosaurus outside my cave the other day when the news came in of the TSB online-banking catastrophe. I admitted in this column some months ago that I had never dabbled with internet banking because I have no desire to link my worldly wealth to the dark forest of thieves we call cyberspace. I was promptly denounced by one reader as a cave man. This week I'd rather be a cave man than a TSB online banker, thanks.

I CAME across a brief report that Bill and Sylvia Bennett of Kidderminster have celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary. It said that Bill spent D-Day, June 6, 1944 on a "secret operation" on the Normandy beaches. There was much more to it than that.

I MET Bill, 91, on a pilgrimage to Normandy some years ago and his D-Day story was astonishing. For a start he was only 18, a Merchant Navy lad put into Royal Navy uniform for the invasion. Secondly, working under enemy fire on the Pluto undersea pipeline at Gold Beach, he was not given any sort of weapon. Thirdly, having helped a wounded comrade to safety, he got a Mentioned in Dispatches for bravery and good conduct. He told me: "I don't remember any of us talking about being scared, we just got on with it." All sorts of great deeds were done in the Normandy Campaign but how many D-Day teenagers went ashore without even a gun and ended the day with an award for gallantry? I would not mind betting that Bill Bennett's D-Day was unique. I wish Bill and Sylvia every happiness.

CAUTIONARY tale. Exactly a year ago I bought a new set of wheel bearings for a boat trailer online. At £12 for the lot they seemed a real bargain. Just 12 months on and only 1,000 miles later, those "bargain" bearings are, to use the technical term employed by my local garage, "totally ****ing ****ed". This matters. The expression "losing your bearings" usually means getting lost but, as any trailer owner will tell you, sometimes it's much more dramatic. Especially if it happens in the middle lane of the M6.

I BOUGHT new bearings not online but at a real old-fashioned trade shop, known as a bearing factor. Bearing Factor. Once again, I seem to have created a new TV detective.