Mark Andrews on Saturday: Civic values, Big Brother, and an odd way to use your phone charger

You can hardly criticise the council for a global pandemic, but the whole project has not exactly been its finest hour. Or should we say its finest five years.

The Civic closed in 2015, for what was supposed to be a £10 million, 29-month refurb. Earlier this year, the reopening date was put back to 2021, the cost having ballooned to £38 million.

Now the reopening has been delayed again, and even more money is needed. It seems a fair assumption that by the time it's finished, Wolverhampton will have gone six, maybe seven years without a concert venue, and the scheme will cost the best part of £50 million.

Now these projects are rarely plain sailing, and when the Civic opened in 1938 it was over budget and delayed. Nevertheless, it took just two years to build at a cost of £150,000, or £10 million at today's prices. Maybe it would have been better to build a new venue from scratch, given that the Civic is not a particularly old or historic building.

Anyhow, council leader Ian Brookfield is asking the Government to step in, spreading the cost to the taxpayer over 50 or maybe 100 years. All I can say is the revamped Civic had better be good if it is going to take a century to pay for.

And if the Government does help, could you really blame campaigners trying to scrape together a tenth of that money to reopen the Dudley Hippodrome for demanding similar largesse?

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Speculation is mounting that Big Brother could soon return to our screens after an absence of, er, 19 months.

Splendid, just what we need at the moment. Watching people cooped up in a house with nothing to do.

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The Government is reportedly spending the thick end of a million pounds respraying an RAF jet red, white and blue for official visits. Which will no doubt go down a storm during the next round of defence cuts.

Just a thought, but if the PM wants a Union Jack plane, why not borrow one? British Airways have one or two lying around at the moment.

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There are some funny folk about. In Thailand Theerapat Klaiya has been arrested for stealing his neighbour's flip-flops for 'lewd purposes'. He admitted to a shoe fetish after police found another 126 shoes at his home, all half-inched from those living around him.

This has all the makings of a major sex sandal.

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Meanwhile, in India a man has had a 2ft phone charger lead removed from his bladder. Surgeons cut him open after a two-day course of laxatives to alleviate stomach pain. We've all been there.

The man, with a 'history of accidental ingestion of headphones’, is thought to have swallowed the lead for sexual gratification.

Each to their own. But perhaps next time they should consider, ahem, charging him.