DRINK and sex – yes, a perilous combination. Especially if the drink, particularly by a woman, gets out of hand.

Following the decision not have a retrial after a jury failed to reach a verdict on a rape charge against a Durham University student, whose alleged victim had been drunk, the accused’s barrister, Cathy McCulloch, stepped forward to warn “young men” of the dangers inherent in casual drinking and sex.

She declared: “We need a campaign to educate them…Even if they have not given the woman the alcohol, if that woman appears to be drunk they must not go there.”

Very true. But isn’t it shame that Ms McCulloch, who specialises in sexual offence cases, didn’t equally recommend a campaign to “educate” women – to have the good sense not to get themselves blind drunk?

THE world’s best opening bat turned the world’s best cricket commentator. That’s my take on the blessed Sir Geoffrey. But the old boy seems to have lost the plot a little with a pet idea to boost the flagging popularity of Test cricket.

As Boycs explains it: “Tell television you have to black it out within a 50 mile radius of where the match is played. Then you get the best of both worlds - TV for people who live a long way away and bums on seats at the ground.” Really. And here are most of us believing the key need with TV is to get the game back on terrestrial channels – though probably too much ground has now been lost. Meanwhile, maybe Boycs should stick to his famous “corridor of uncertainty”, where he scarcely ever puts a foot wrong.

ANOTHER cricket item: “Stokes up for auction” – a headline on Durham all-rounder Ben Stokes’s aim to play in the Indian Premier League. Good luck to him but, try as I will, I can no more envisage that headline with “Trueman” substituted for Stokes than I can picture the legendary fast bowler in a team huddle.

NOW, what’s this with vinyl – sales spinning sharply upward from what was perceived as the deathbed of the record player? This contradicts what I continually hear of how “consumers” now listen to (or rather “access”) music in different ways.

Well, I’ve never “streamed” or “downloaded” a note but I do listen to CDs. Their convenience compared to an LP is off the scale: more tracks, armchair control, personal scheduling. Where does vinyl score? On sound quality, say some. No difference retort I, though that could be because most of what I listen to wasn’t well recorded in the first place. But let’s put this revival in perspective. Yes, sales last year were the highest for 23 years and a spectacular 53 per cent up on 2015. But of the 123m albums in all formats sold just 3.2m were LPs.

What the new LP buyers seem to like most are the sleeves. I still have some classics – Frank Sinatra’s Come Fly With Me, The Atomic Mr Basie. Perhaps they will enable my children to retire early. They’ll certainly never spin again on my record player.