I HAD A TOUCH OF 'FLU TODAY

I was somewhat incapacitated today by a touch of the dreaded flu, though, thankfully, not of the porcine variety. I spent much of the time lying on my back on the sofa listening to John Mortimer reading from his autobiography 'Crawling from the Wreckage.' Parts of it were moving, but I prefer the 'Rumpole' stories myself. I read today's 'Times' from cover to cover, but there's never very much to cheer you up in that, just the odd trenchant piece about how plump children are or that we're all going to die by 2050. Well I certainly am, anyhow, I can verify that. I normally cut the cartoon out and stick it in my scrapbook, but it wasn't very funny today. It showed a picture of an aide in the White House sitting in despair at a desk with a file marked 'Afghanistan Strategy' and President Obabma assuming the position of 'The Thinker,' statuesque, chin on fist. Daylight faded and I turned on the television. 200 channels and nothing on any of them. I ended up, almost in desperation, watching a Xmas edition of 'Porridge' from 1975, still very funny, mainly due to the under-rated Fulton Mackay as the martinet prison officer Mr Mackay. I also watched the penultimate 'All Creatures Great and Small', by then a plotless hotch-potch of stereotypes long past its sell-by date (1990). Finally I caught the end of the film 'Please Sir' from 1971. I was amazed at how antediluvian it looked, with all those pink shirts, Harry Hill collars and tank top jumpers, and that was just the girls. Yet I used to think it was hilariously funny when I was 21. There were, however, a couple of lines that had me howling with laughter and I have no hesitation in replicating them here. MRS ABBOT (tearful at her darling son Frankie getting on the coach to go away to camp for the first time) to POTTER (the idiotic caretaker): "They took my fallopians away when I had little Frankie." POTTER: "Kept jumping on the pram, did they?" I hope I don't have flu tomorrow.