Warren Buffett’s $44 billion (£loads) purchase of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railway company was the best news I have heard all year. At last: a railway served by trains where EVERY carriage is a Buffett carriage.

No, but seriously, that’s probably the best joke I’ve ever made (the slightly clunky misspell notwithstanding). I shouldn’t have to write anything else today. You ought to just be happy with that. In fact, I should never have to write anything ever again. I should just retire. I should make like Iago and “never more speak word”. Abjure, like Prospero, this rough magic, and drown my book.

It’s a bit like Freddie Flintoff throwing that awesome run out at the Oval to win the Ashes, and then walking off into the sunset. To go after that gag would be to retire undefeated, like Marciano, Cantona or Zidane (to name but three great boxers). Or like Keats, croaking at his peak with his name writ in water. Or was that Shelley?

But no, I haven’t the sense. Like Ali, I’ll keep coming back, and coming back, trying to recapture that “Buffett carriage” moment, until my brain and body are gone, and all I have is your pity.

The thing is, I really am glad that the world’s second-richest man chose to spend $44 billion (£noreallyit’smasses) on, of all things, a railway. It’s just so much more classy than buying an airline or a goldmine or a country or a piece of turbot at the River Café.

As if we didn’t love Warren Buffett enough already, for being so nice, so modest, so ... old. And for saying that cool thing when the credit crunch hit, about seeing people’s bums when the tide goes out and finding out who’s got the smallest willy. And for calling the downturn “poetic justice”. And for pledging to give 85 per cent of his fortune to charity.

And now this. Nothing could be more poetic than investing in a railway company. He has done it, apparently, because he believes that freight haulage by road is not the future, making this the most (maybe the only) significant ethical investment yet made — and in America, of all places, which built the greatest railways on Earth and then left them to rot when it fell in love with the car.

I think the multibillionaires might be our last chance. I love the idea of tycoons investing us all the way back to the golden age of travel. I’m hoping Wazza will go all the way and opt for steam. And passenger transport in wooden carriages with leather upholstery, and sleepers with linen and double beds. And a proper dining car.

And wouldn’t it be lovely if Bill Gates invested in ocean liners? Proper ones like the, well, not like the Titanic, but like the ones that didn’t sink. And so then all the airlines would fail, and we could go back to chug-chugging around the world in boats with ballrooms and tennis courts and racetracks, and not be in such a rush any more.

And Lakshmi Mittal could invest in horses. And there’d be no more drilling for oil or traffic jams or urban pollution. And with all that horse crap, fertiliser would be so cheap that organic farming would become economically preferable to the industrialised way.

And Carlos Slim Helú (they’re going to have to be men I’ve googled now) could invest billions in books, and Lawrence Ellison could invest in letters, and then computers and phones would shrivel and die. And Ingvar Kamprad could plough his billions into celery so there’d be no more fat people, and so on.

When men as rich as Buffett (and there aren’t many) start deciding that money must be invested sustainably — entirely for business, not altruistic reasons, because it is the only way to protect your capital in the long term — then that’s the start of it not being necessarily quite the end of the world just yet.

“Adolf Hitler was Germany’s football team manager, according to youngsters aged 9 to 15,” began a piece in one of yesterday’s papers, revealing how little young people know about the two world wars.

Furthermore, 40 per cent of the 2,000 children questioned did not know that Remembrance Day falls on November 11. Although by the time they get to university they will no doubt have grasped that it’s a great time to pee on poppies.

One in 20 thought the Holocaust was the celebration at the end of the war (“Fools!” cries the BNP, “It was the celebration during the war!”). And one in ten believed that “SS” stood for “The Secret Seven”, which I actually thought was terribly encouraging — I had no idea so many children still read Enid Blyton.

But on that “Hitler was the German football manager” thing: I wonder how this belief of theirs affects some of the truisms one learns in school about Hitler, and in particular, about his big mistakes.

Do children today believe, for example, that Germany lost the 1944 World Cup because Hitler refused to listen to his coaches, and insisted on playing Russia in winter?

Do they think that he compounded it, when things started going wrong in the Russia match, by ordering them, on pain of death, NEVER to pass back to the keeper?

Do they think that he still might have won the World Cup if only he hadn’t demanded a match with America, who up until that point were not even especially interested in football?

And one can only assume that they think Hitler’s biggest mistake of all was to pick two big lads up front and play a lot of long balls, on the misguided assumption that England could be beaten in the air?

There was a story in Thursday’s Times headlined “Sacked adviser warns of alcohol time bomb”, which briefly gave me hope that a new cocktail had been developed that releases its goodness in stages, like a time-release cold remedy, so that you need only one at the beginning of the evening to stay drunk all night.

Or, better still, maybe an “alcohol time bomb” was a cocktail which didn’t get you drunk immediately but instead went off three days later. These would be excellent for travelling to dry countries such as Saudi Arabia — just slug down three or four at Heathrow, and away you go.

But the “alcohol time bomb” turned out not to be a cocktail after all. It’s just more boring evidence that 98 per cent of pre-teens will be alcoholics by next Tuesday.

Very disappointing.

I read the other day that Patsy Kensit had been burgled and her Mini had been stolen. “The 41-year-old actress was not at her £1.1 million home in Archway at the time of the break-in,” explained the article, before revealing that the car was “recovered near Kentish Town”.

As a resident of Kentish Town these past 15 years, I was not surprised by this detail. Anyone in his right mind, upon stealing a car in Archway, would immediately drive it the five minutes to Kentish Town, if for nothing else but the improvement in air quality and sense of safety from burglars.

I must say I was quite surprised to learn that Patsy lives there. She used to live in Primrose Hill. I suppose Holby City must pay like a drain. And as for this business of her “£1.1 million home” — come off it, Pats. In Archway? What’s it made of, gold?

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