Peter Rhodes on premium bonds, shiny shoes and the bill for Harry's security
I read Prince Harry's account of being pushed about by William and thought, well, so what? I was one of five brothers. There may have been a time when one of the five was not teasing, pushing punching or Chinese-burning one of the others but I don't remember it. It's a bro thing.
But with hindsight, how did we hacks become obsessed with the Harry/Will punch-up trivia, yet overlook for many hours the far more important issue of Harry claiming to have killed 25 Taliban? His war stories tell us two significant things. Firstly, he has no sense of self-preservation.
Secondly, his advisers, who should be protecting him from himself, have let him down terribly by allowing his Afghanistan head-count to appear in print. The Sussexes spend millions of dollars a year on personal security for them and their children. Now that Harry has made himself a target for jihadists everywhere, that bill will go through the roof.
Kiwi shoe polish, that staple of generation of spit 'n' polish squaddies, is being withdrawn from the British market. The Daily Telegraph, which gets more worked up about such things than many publications, carried a number of letters from outraged readers. I was intrigued by a couple suggesting you can judge a man's character by the state of his shoes.
No, you can't. If someone is wearing super-shiny shoes, he may be a perfectly nice bloke. On the other hand he may be a simmering, and possibly dangerous, obsessive. If you put your faith in people with shiny shoes, neatly-trimmed hair, tight-knotted ties or any other traditional indicators of good character, you could encounter some thoroughly bad characters.
The Premium Bond people have updated their website and, as is so often the way, a once-simple process is now hideously complicated and features that essential part of online life, the app. Here's the bumf: “Our handy prize checker app lets you know what you’ve won from wherever you are – whether that’s in the garden, on the bus or while drinking a milkshake on a rollercoaster.”
Be honest. If you found yourself sitting on a rollercoaster next to somebody drinking a milkshake while checking his premium bond winnings, wouldn't every fibre of your being yearn for him to drop either his milkshake, his phone or both?
