Rhodes on recreating mammoths, avoiding the C-word and the passing of some much-loved expressions
Read the latest column from Peter Rhodes.
So, pedestrians, have you yet exercised your rights in the revamped Highway Code and stepped off the kerb into the path of a vehicle turning left? No, me neither. That's why I'm still alive to write this.
The Responder (BBC1) features Martin Freeman as a drug-taking bent cop chasing the criminal underclass in the vicious, seedy back streets of Liverpool. After Life (Netflix) revolves around a cosy little weekly newspaper in a genteel Home Counties town. So why is it that the C-word appeared not once in The Responder but pops up all the time in After Life? The Responder showed it is perfectly possible to produce first-class, hard-hitting drama without breaking this final taboo.
Mind you, it was a little distressing to see how far Martin Freeman has fallen. He used to be such a nice little Hobbit.
A team of scientists at Harvard Medical School are trying to recreate a woolly mammoth – extinct for 10,000 years - by extracting DNA from frozen remains. I wonder how the mammoths will react as they sense in their race-memory the changes wrought to their planet by 10,000 years of human domination. First thoughts: “You've made a right mess of this place, haven't you?”
More to the point, some critics are suggesting legal controls should be imposed on the resurrecting-animals business. How, for instance, might a new species affect the ecosystem? And here's a random thought of my own. Supposing a recreated mammoth happened to carry a virus which mutated and became lethal to humans, on the lines of Covid-19? Ten thousand years ago humans were killing mammoths. What chance, 100 centuries years later, of mammoths killing humans?
A survey reveals that some of the oldest expressions in the English language (pearls before swine, mad as a hatter, nailing your colours to the mast, etc) are no longer used by millions of Brits. “Know your onions” means nothing to 68 per cent, “a stitch in time saves nine” to 64 per cent and “keen as mustard” to 58 per cent.
It is truly tragic. English, the richest and most popular language in the world, is bejewelled with hundreds of quirky little expressions which are now rejected, ignored or unknown by half the UK population. Pearls before swine, innit?
