Jane Bell
Belmaduthy, Ross-shire
SIR – Hooray for a new editor for The Archers. Let’s hope he, too, hasn’t got a baby obsession, as the last few weeks of the programme have been saturated with baby scans, baby classes and surrogate babies to such a degree that I might have to take maternity leave and switch off.
Jane Wood
Tisbury, Wiltshire
One killed every minute
SIR – First we lose Nic on The Archers to sepsis, then Barbara from Call the Midwife in a similar vein.
I dare not move anywhere near Oxford, East Anglia, Jersey, London, Manchester, Birmingham, Shetland or the Caribbean for fear of getting murdered.
John Robert Dalton
Middle Woodford, Wiltshire
Knives out
SIR – My wife and I have a new game which is to see if we can spot any actor in a modern drama who uses a knife at all. So far we have failed. They all use a fork only as a shovel.
J. Mills
Casterton, Cumbria
Portillo’s poker face
SIR – Michael Portillo would make an excellent poker player. Week after week, he manages to conceal his distaste for the flamboyant colour combinations that he is asked to wear on Great British Railway Journeys.
Bruce Ridge
Clevedon, North Somerset
SIR – I fail to understand why there is so much fuss concerning train services and the railways in this country. I regularly watch Michael Portillo on television and he does not seem to experience any difficulty. Much of the time he is the only person in a carriage. Perhaps he is the man to put in charge to sort out any problems?
Roger Noons
Kingswinford, West Midlands
Artists above their station
SIR – One often hears the question “What is art?” whenever the contentious issue of contemporary art is discussed. On seeing the photograph of Tracey Emin’s latest installation at St Pancras Station, I could perhaps ask: What isn’t art?
Shaun Whyte
Alnmouth, Northumberland
Ant on the skids
SIR – I note that Ant McPartlin was fined £86,000 for drink-driving. With a reported weekly salary of £130,000, I’m relieved to know that Mr McPartlin had £44,000 left to last him until the end of the week.
Wg Cdr Kevin Dowling (retd)
Welbourn, Lincolnshire
SIR – At least now I know which is Ant and which is Dec.
Pam Lyons
Holywell, Flintshire
Literal putdown
SIR – Has anyone apart from Mr Booker ever read a book by Salman Rushdie?
Richard Youens
Pewsey, Wiltshire
Lost in translation
SIR – McMafia almost justifies the TV licence as it is gripping to watch.
What I like best is the look on James Norton’s face as he wishes he understood Russian.
Charlotte Joseph
Lawford, Essex
Custard and jelly revenge
SIR – We now have an Oscar nomination for a Briton who plays his part with a faultless American accent. Is this payback time for Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins?
John Rowlands
Harpenden, Hertfordshire
SIR – My husband wants to be known as the man who never saw The Sound of Music.
Ann Garbett
Sheffield
SIR – If the actress playing Maria in West Side Story must come from Puerto Rico, who is to play Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream?
She hails from Fairyland.
Andrew Lakeman
Pensford, Somerset
SIR – I look forward to a new production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle using real live giants.
Rosie Clarke
Nailsea, North Somerset
Hopping mad
SIR – I was heartened to read that Allergy UK is seeking the withdrawal of the Peter Rabbit film, in which a rabbit pelts a deadly enemy with berries to which he is allergic.
I was going to complain about the portrayal of a white male authority figure mistreating weaker creatures.
They have saved me a stamp.
Margaret Ellis
High Bentham, North Yorkshire
Humphrys in the hot seat
SIR – I am surprised anyone can support the BBC paying John Humphrys some £600,000 for skewering the slippery and disingenuous when most of us would be happy to do it for free.
Michael Edwards
Haslemere, Surrey
SIR – Of course Demelza shouldn’t get the same pay as Ross Poldark. He gallops a horse along a cliff edge, goes down dangerous mines, scythes grass and fights everyone.
She sits at home feeling peeved and has an affair with a short-sighted naval officer.
Malcolm Allen
Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire
The Ten O’Clock Maybe
SIR – The BBC News is known in our household as the “Could, Should, Might and Maybe half hour”.
When will presenters cease to offer their opinions and report fact?
Martin Sobey
Dartmouth, Devon
SIR – You know the summer holidays are finally over when BBC News is no longer a Laura Kuenssberg-free zone.
Stephen Howey
Woodford Green, Essex
SIR – How do TV producers decide which items of news should be presented standing and which sitting?
John Mayo
Hewelsfield, Gloucestershire
SIR – I have noticed that on television chat shows there is now a tendency to remain seated when shaking hands. This, along with military saluting without a hat, is likely to incur the wrath of God.
Chris Harding
Parkstone, Dorset
Million dollar question
SIR – How can anyone who has watched Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? still support our state-sector comprehensive education system?
Brian Christley
Abergele, Conwy
The sacking of Troy
SIR – Last night I watched part of the final episode of the BBC’s Troy: Fall of a City. The production was on a lavish enough scale but the dialogue was ruinous to the overall effect. An ill-chosen phrase here, or a supererogatory word there, made it all sound a little too colloquially modern and quite out of place.
Now that the city has been sacked, a like fate ought to befall the scriptwriter.
Derrick Gillingham
London SW1
Fighting talk
SIR – I was settling down this evening to watch the boxing match for the WBC world flyweight eliminator when Channel 5 announced that “the following programme may contain scenes of violence”.
Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather duster.
Dave I’Anson
Formby, Merseyside
GOOD AND BAD SPORTS
An Englishman, two Kiwis and a Scotsman
SIR – Tribalism in sport is real. My wife and I happened to be in Madeira on holiday for the Rugby World Cup final in 2003 and were watching the match in a bar with two New Zealanders, a Scotsman and a South African.
Being English, my wife and I were supporting England. The Scot was supporting Australia, as he clearly could not cheer on England. The New Zealanders were supporting England as they clearly could not support Australia, and the South African was supporting whoever was winning at the time.
Richard Packer
Westcott, Surrey
Crocodile tears
SIR – It could just be me but, frankly, I am more disappointed in the Australian cricketers for the tears than the ball tampering.
Judith A. Scott
St Ives, Cambridgeshire
SIR – The weeping and wailing by the Aussies is not really part of their psyche. Have any of the TV cameras picked up the surreptitious use of peeled onions?
Peter Williams
Rufforth, North Yorkshire
SIR – Surely one way to stop cheating on the cricket pitch is to remove pockets from th
e cricket trousers.
Why do they need trouser pockets on the cricket pitch?
Mike Maloney
St Albans, Hertfordshire
SIR – A new cricket ball with one side pre-roughened could solve a problem.
Thomas Wilkinson
Filey, North Yorkshire
SIR – It’s bad enough the Australians are beating us at the cricket, but now they’re sending us their flu.
Nick Mawer
Eastbourne, East Sussex
SIR – I fail to be surprised by the behaviour of the Australian cricket team. After all, we sent their families out there in prison ships.
David J. Hartshorn
Badby, Northamptonshire
SIR – At last! Some cricket coverage in The Daily Telegraph.
Elizabeth Bellamy
Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire
Broken boundaries
SIR – Trying to find an edible avocado at a supermarket, I muttered crossly: “You could play cricket with these.”
Another avocado-seeker, a delightful Indian gentleman, offered from over my left shoulder: “England couldn’t.”
At the time, England were touring India and were under the cosh. We adjourned to the in-store cafe for coffee, over which we shared our love, and then went our separate ways.
Anne Jappie
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
Gentlemanly players
SIR – Back in the mists of time the English cricket team was comprised of “Players” and “Gentlemen”. We may think that we live in more democratic and enlightened times but at least back then the “Players” were also gentlemen.
David Salter
Kew, Surrey
SIR – What is the world coming to? Two young men were shown drinking Prosecco, from plastic glasses, at Lords, on day three of the test match.
Garth McGowen
Littleport, Cambridgeshire
No guide to future (enhanced) performance
SIR – If professional sports people are spot-tested and punished for recreational drug-taking then why are those who look after our pensions and investments not also spot-tested?
Richard Tinn
Boston, Lincolnshire
SIR – I think we can safely assume that the England cricket team will not be accused of using any performance-enhancing substances.
Nick Cudmore
Grimoldby, Lincolnshire
SIR – I now feel conscience-bound to admit that I was given a glucose tablet half an hour before I ran the 100 yards in the District Sports in 1957.
Should I return my silver medal to the district schools’ authority?
Rita Russell
Lingfield, Surrey
A game of six clichés
SIR – Not being much of a linguist, I’ve spent the off-season learning Premiership-speak.
I’ve put together a few words and phrases that may assist the uninitiated to more fully understand the game:
Unbelievable – quite good
Outstanding – not bad
Superb – average
A difficult skill to master – can’t kick with his left foot
Went down easily – cheated
He’s really hurt – he’s a cry-baby.
I hope that helps.
Phil Roberts
Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire
SIR – Just when we thought that the word turgid had been dropped from the sporting vocabulary it popped up again over the festive period.
A commentator on Radio 4 described the cricket pitch at Melbourne as turgid.
This is when my brain went into overdrive trying to picture this cricket pitch, bearing in mind that the two terms used in sex education at school many years ago were “flaccid” and “turgid” to describe the state of a certain part of the anatomy.
John Hewett
Ponteland, Northumberland
SIR – Eddie Jones has shown, once again, that he is a grand-master of testiculation: the art of waving one’s arms around aimlessly while talking a lot of balls.
Philip Richards
Castletown, Isle of Man
Fore!
SIR – The curse of slow play in golf would be alleviated if the laws were changed to allow tackling.
Phil Saunders
Bungay, Suffolk
Thugby vs yob-ball
SIR – My rugby-loving friends, including myself, refer to football as “yob-ball”. Our football-supporting friends refer to rugby as “thugby”.
Philip Samengo-Turner
Cirencester, Gloucestershire
SIR – Our games master, Dai Roberts, couldn’t bring himself to say either “football” or “soccer”. He used to refer to it as “the game with the round ball”, and woe betide any of us boys caught playing it.
David Smith
Calverton, Nottinghamshire
Wearing one’s nose on one’s sleeve
SIR – I read that Arsenal is looking to get sleeve sponsorship. May I suggest Kleenex for Arsène Wenger’s, as he never seems to have a hankie when he needs one.
David James
Tavistock, Devon
SIR – Following Arsenal Football Club, as I do, is about as relaxing as being a Jesuit in Elizabethan England.
Mike Humphries
Barton-on-Sea, Hampshire
Weekly pay packet
SIR – Why is it that the pay of football players is almost always referred to in terms of weekly wages? I can think of no other profession where the professional’s pay is quoted in anything other than an annual figure.
It is common to hear that a player is getting £100,000 a week but you never hear that the Prime Minister is on a rather piffling, by comparison, £3,000 a week.
Nicholas Cooper
Dartmouth, Devon
Hole in run
SIR – While watching the London Marathon I realised that, whichever stretch of road was being televised, I had not seen one pothole.
Now I know why there is not a Cumbrian Marathon – the potholes are knee-deep around here.
Shirley J. Ramshaw
Arnside, Cumbria
SIR – Catching a glimpse of the London Marathon as I was channel-hopping reminded me of my favourite oxymoron: fun-run.
Clive Hallett
Wheatley, Oxfordshire
Walk-on parts in darts
SIR – News that the Professional Darts Corporation will cease the practice of “walk-on girls” accompanying the players at the start of the match is concerning.
Surely these gentlemen can’t be expected to find the dart board without some help?
Dr J.R. Drummond
Anstruther, Fife
SIR – I do hope F1 bosses will respond positively to the furore about their use of scantily clad pit stop girls. In the interests of equality they should replace them immediately with honed, toned and tanned chaps wearing skin-tight jeans or shorts and even tighter muscle vests, speedos (as worn by Daniel Craig), or artistically draped motor stable flags.
Who could possibly object?
Wilma Haley
Doncaster
SIR – I can happily accept the presence of grid girls at motor racing events – I just wish I had been slim enough and pretty enough to be one. What I find very difficult to accept is the waste of good champagne that is sprayed everywhere, and the thought of all that stickiness attracting ants and wasps.
Gill Clark
Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire
Pole position
SIR – I am the proud grandmother of an 11-year-old pole-dancing granddaughter.
It lends a certain frisson to the art of Granny-boasting. If pole-dancing ever becomes an Olympic sport, and the suggestion is that it might, I shall be watching that space.
Veronica Craig
Cavendish, Suffolk
Olympic movement
SIR – Welcome to the “Clare Balding hand/arm waving Olympics”. These appear to consist of simulated meat-chopping, garlic-crushing and fly-swatting manoeuvre
s, interspersed with occasional showings of some of the actual Olympics.
Would it not be possible to handcuff her before we are completely driven to despair?
Michael Beaumont
Turnford, Hertfordshire
SIR – Why is massive the adjective of choice by BBC commentators at the Winter Olympics?
The word is being massively overused.
Gordon Casely
Crathes, Kincardineshire
SIR – Describing the results of the British team at the Winter Olympics in terms of “best ever” and “record-breaking” is like saying £10 is a vast improvement on £9.99. I could do better on a tea tray.
Stefan Badham
Portsmouth, Hampshire
Advantage dreamers
SIR – Many years ago I dreamt I was preparing to face Virginia Wade in the women’s Wimbledon final. Walking out onto the court I panicked remembering I was (and still am) hopeless at tennis.
Logic then took over and reasoned that if I was in the final I must be pretty competent, and so I stopped worrying.
Maggie Burridge
Axbridge, Somerset
Must I Repeat Myself...? Page 9