Teach yourself English in a split second

My weekly guide to "Wot tickled me in the Saturday Guardian"

• A Czech speedway racer, previously barely able to speak a word of English, spoke perfect "Newsreader" English after being hit on the head during a race.

• How many "sics" can you have? Tim Dowling, reporting an item from North Korea in "This Week" uses an unusual full set of sics:

As the Democratic (sic) People's (sic) Republic (sic) celebrates its 59th birthday...

• Simon Hoggart nicely sums up the Thatcher/Brown photo-op:

Gordon Brown realise the huge symbolic power of the pictures showing him with Margaret Thatcher outside No 10, just before inviting her in for tea and little sandwiches? Margaret Thatcher, the epitome of the forces his supporters most detested and wanted overthrown! Together, swapping notes and reminiscences! I'm sure I'm not the only person to think of the end of Animal Farm, when the pigs, now walking on two legs, have moved in with the humans. The other animals gaze through the windows at their masters: "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig...but already it was too late to say which was which." Or as the Who put it, even more succinctly, "Meet the new boss/ Same as the old boss."