Give cheese a chance

Left-field news story of the weekend was Al Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his "efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

Some commentators have been cynical about this award: that it's for making a movie - not lying down in front of a tank, getting beaten by police or being put under house arrest. The word "peace" is not even mention in the official citation for the award.

But the way I look at it, it opens things up for the rest of us. By the same criteria, I might reasonably expect to get nominated for the Nobel Prize for Chemistry next year, on the grounds of the excellent cheese on toast I have been making in 2007.