Peter Rhodes on dubious dumbphones, flights for idiots and the row over Adele's barnet

After the “Covidiot” flight from Zante with passengers refusing to wear face masks, here's an idea. Why don't the airlines offer idiot and non-idiot flights? A tasteful little symbol would indicate whether the aircraft accepts drunks, drug users, mask-refusers and the like. Sober, decent people who simply want an uneventful trip would opt for the non-idiot flights.

No, I can't see it happening either. Some years ago, train companies launched “quiet carriages” for peace-loving passengers. Whatever happened to them?

Until this week, we knew that if a bunch of partygoers blacked their faces or wore Mexican sombreros, they were guilty of the modern crime of cultural appropriation. If they were students at some of our posher universities, the crime was even more serious. And then this week the singer Adele popped up with her hair styled in something called Bantu knots. Hundreds of Instagrammers promptly denounced her for cultural appropriation.

However, David Lammy MP who never knowingly misses a bandwagon, celebrated her “dress up or masquerade” appearance. Naomi Campbell, too, supported Adele and so did other posters who said there was a difference between cultural appropriation and “cultural celebration.”

But what difference? It seems the golden rule is that if it's done by somebody we like (iconic working-class singer) it's cultural celebration and if it's done by somebody we dislike (Oxbridge toffs) it's cultural appropriation. This seems a weird basis for any ethical code but then we live in weird times.

My passing reference yesterday to Wilfred Pickles seems timely. When Pickles became a wartime newsreader, some feared his broad Yorkshire accent was entirely wrong for the BBC and listeners might not believe the news delivered in such tones. Yet the sky did not fall in and Pickles became the pioneer for regional accents on radio.

Eighty years on, the BBC's intellectual programme on spoken English, Word of Mouth (Radio 4) formerly presented by Michael Rosen, is now in the hands, and vocal cords, of playwright Sabrina Mahfouz. She once boasted: “I definitely have the most London accent they’ve ever had on Radio 4” and she delivers the show in such a strong accent that Word of Mouth has become Worder Marf. It's all about diversity. She's a Wilfred Pickles for our time, innit?

So what was the “suspicious device” found in the loo of a Ryanair plane headed for Stansted this week which caused two RAF jets to be scrambled? According to reports, it proved to be “a mobile phone.” But what is remotely suspicious about a mobile, the most recognisable device of our age?

My initial theory, which may be overtaken by events, is that almost everyone these days seems to have a smartphone. So an old-fashioned “dumbphone,” like my ancient Samsung, while indisputably a mobile, is as unfamiliar and suspicious to an iPhone user as a flint axe in a laser arcade. No touchscreen? Scramble the RAF!