Peter Rhodes on a strange schedule, cutlery in the class war and the difference between cowardice and common sense

The BBC has backed down. The words of Land of Hope and Glory and Rule, Britannia! will be sung at the Last Night of the Proms by socially distanced singers. But are their hearts in it? Can we ensure someone checks that the singers, as they belt out the patriotic lines, are not crossing their fingers?

Channel 5's adaptation of All Creatures Great and Small has had a good response from viewers and critics, although the scheduling remains a mystery. It follows the documentary series The Yorkshire Vet. So that's one hour of Yorkshire sheep being really castrated, followed by one hour of Yorkshire sheep being fictitiously castrated. A strange schedule.

The hardest job in All Creatures Great and Small falls to Samuel West playing Siegfried, the character Robert Hardy made his own in the BBC adaptation from 1978-90. How do you follow an act like that? Rather than aping the tetchy Hardy, West gives us a gentler Siegfried, which looks promising.

I interviewed Sam West 20 years ago when he was in the title role of Richard II at Stratford. He was thrilled to be starring with the RSC but had no illusions about the insecurity of acting. He admitted he was grateful for whatever came his way, including a nice little sideline narrating documentary films on all sorts of subjects. The more narration he did, Sam West told me, the more he learned about the strangest things. “Anything you want to know about weather patterns on Mars?” he asked, brightly.

I joined an unfashionable minority in January 2015, after the Charlie Hebdo magazine massacre in France. Journalists everywhere were queuing up to declare: “Je Suis Charlie,” in solidarity with the publication whose staff had been butchered by Islamist murderers after publishing cartoons of Mohammed. After much thought, I wrote: “Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie,” pointing out that images of the Prophet are considered offensive to most Muslims, not just the wilder fringes of Islam: “It offends the very people whose help we most need to defeat the psychopaths of jihadism.”

A few days ago, as the trial of alleged conspirators began, Charlie Hebdo saw fit to re-publish the offending cartoons. I despair. Its editors declared that not re-publishing the images would have amounted to “political or journalistic cowardice.” Or common sense, perhaps?

Shot myself in the foot with Thursday's piece about sorting cutlery, didn't I? The Government has quietly leaked the idea that the middle class might expect a series of whopping tax rises to fill the financial black hole caused by the pandemic. And in this age of tiny new houses, takeaway meals and chicken in a bucket, what marks you down as part of the middle-class elite so much as eating with a proper knife, fork and spoon at a proper dining table?

PS: If you've got a proper dining room, you're probably logged for tax purposes as aristocracy. Run for the hills.