4 MARCH 1949, Page 5

I see that the arduosities of the Labour Conference at

Shanklin were mitigated by selections from the Minister of Education's inexhaustible repertory of anecdotes. I shall be surprised if this was not one of them: As two men were standing talking on the pave- ment in a Lancashire town (George Tomlinson's stories couldn't be told in any other dialect) a funeral came by, and it was observed that a bag of golf clubs was resting on the coffin in the hearse. " He must have been a keen golfer " observed one of the onlookers intelligently. "Must have been ? " said the other. "Is. He's going on to a match this afternoon. That's his wife's funeral."