Must I Repeat Myself...?

by Iain Hollingshead

  Must I Repeat Myself…?

  Unpublished Letters to

  EDITED BY

  IAIN HOLLINGSHEAD WITH KATE MOORE

  SIR – There are three reasons why I subscribe to The Daily Telegraph: the crossword, Matt and the prospect of seeing a letter published.

  I guess two out of three ain’t bad.

  Andy Dabson

  Liss, Hampshire

  SIR – As so many people are apologising, it is clearly the thing to do, so I apologise too. Apologies for writing.

  Hugo Summerson

  London SW20

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Family Life and Tribulations

  Westminster’s Village Idiots

  Home Thoughts on Abroad

  The Use and Abuse of Language

  That’s Entertainment?

  Good and Bad Sports

  The Roads Much Travelled

  Royal Blushes

  Dear Daily Telegraph

  P.S.

  INTRODUCTION

  Happy birthday to the unpublished letters series! Over the course of 10 books and more than 5,000 letters, some of which featured on Have I Got News for You (during the MPs’ expenses scandal) and the Today programme (in a debate about why more men write than women), the readers have passed caustic comment on three Prime Ministers; two referenda; three American Presidents; the wives (and mistresses) of three French Presidents; one Russian leader (whether he called himself President or Prime Minister); two Royal weddings (three if, like the Picture Editor, you consider Pippa Middleton part of the family); three Royal births; two Summer Olympic Games; three World Cups; six series of Downton Abbey; numerous mispronunciations, misprints and marital misunderstandings; and just one Silvio Berlusconi.

  Time flies when the letter-writers are having fun.

  Looking through the previous editions, it struck me how much has changed. The readers have watched London burn, the Middle East revolt, Prince William grow bald, Prince Harry grow up and England get slightly better at football, losing twice to Belgium, instead of once to Iceland. They have bade fond and furious farewells, sometimes more than once, to everyone from Tony Blair to Osama bin Laden, Louise Mensch to Ed Miliband. Scandals came and went, including Bunga Bunga, Top Gear, horse lasagne, Cecil Rhodes, Rolf Harris, phone-tapping and super-injunctions (“a morning-after pill for celebrities?” suggested one reader). I particularly enjoyed revisiting the letters from “M”, the correspondent who believed himself (at least, I always assumed it was a he) the head of MI5, writing from an internet café in Bristol. Sadly, he appears to have gone even deeper undercover (to the West Country, perhaps, beyond the reach of superfast broadband) since the sixth edition. We have missed his musings on whether Tom Daley is a CIA spy or Cherie Blair the secret leader of ISIS.

  Most of all, however, there is a sense of continuity across the series. As one correspondent, who had also recently re-read all nine books, points out this year, the names of the targets might change, but the rants remain as eclectic and humorous as ever. Readers still grapple with modern media, manners and technology (Alexa and driverless cars are new entries in the latter category this year). They’re still wonderfully willing to share the intimacies of their domestic lives with a wide audience. And, you might notice, many of them continue to be more than mildly miffed about the EU. Mrs May’s Chequers deal in July this year prompted a heavier postbag than any event since the duck houses and home-flipping of 2009.

  While the news cycle can, at times, appear painfully repetitive, Telegraph letter-writers can always be relied upon, therefore, to provide an original angle. This anniversary year finds them on especially good form, whether wondering if Meghan Markle has ever visited Sussex; reminiscing about how to wield a hatpin in the days before #MeToo; or coping with heatwaves and snow storms, sometimes in the same month.

  I am particularly tickled by their enduring ability to relate items in the news to their own lives – and vice versa. Donald Trump tweets his latest banality; grandparents write about how the President reminds them of their young, irrational grandchildren. The Russians interfere with other countries’ politics; a reader wonders if his online grocery order has also been hacked. Drugs testing is introduced across more sports; perhaps pension advisers should be tested in a similar way? A British-made food-processor blade leaps out of a European dishwasher without a second glance – is there a Brexit parallel there?

  It is sad for me to reflect, therefore, that this is my final year at the editor’s helm. Like Jeremy Clarkson, Chris Huhne and Colonel Gaddafi – albeit for happier reasons – it is time to move on. Although I won’t miss the attempts at poetry (the numerous versions of “To Leave or not to Leave” were especially painful last year), there is a huge amount which I will look back fondly on (sorry, readers – upon which I will look back fondly). I will never forget our correspondents’ gentle, but lethal, ability to prick pomposity in all its forms; their desire to grow old disgracefully (and sexily); their gloriously unhealthy relationship with alcohol; or their bewildered determination to understand a world that has sometimes changed quicker than they might have hoped. As well as their wit, erudition and occasional downright lunacy, I have especially enjoyed their historical perspective – reminiscing, for example, about burying grand pianos in their gardens in the 1950s or comparing this summer’s heatwave with the drought of 1976. I have also been hugely appreciative of their great personal warmth; many have made regular appearances in my own inbox, as well as in the newspaper’s.

  Fortunately, I leave the series in the capable hands of Kate Moore, who has been invaluable in helping to compile the last three editions. I am grateful to her, as I am, as ever, to Christopher Howse, the Letters Editor, and the incomparable Matt, the cartoonist. I shall continue to follow the books as a reader – and, who knows, one day maybe even as a tentative letter-writer myself. For now, however, I shall enjoy leaving it to the seasoned experts. I hope the Telegraph’s very own – and very special – correspondents feel a little less alone than they did back in 2009.

  Iain Hollingshead

  London SE22

  FAMILY LIFE AND TRIBULATIONS

  Testing times on the home front

  SIR – My initial reaction on reading your headline “Testing four-year-olds” was: “Aren’t they all?”

  Garry Rucklidge

  Chapel Allerton, Somerset

  SIR – We are all aware of the sleep deprivation that young mothers suffer. I was therefore impressed by the wistful comment heard recently in our Community Centre: “When my two-year-old becomes a stroppy teenager I am going to wake him up at four in the morning to tell him that one of my socks has come off.”

  Dave Alsop

  Gloucester

  SIR – During the usual “career choice” sessions at school, our youngest sister, in a moment of teenaged parent-baiting, announced to her patient father that she thought prostitution might be a lucrative career.

  Our darling father didn’t flinch, replying that he really didn’t mind what she decided to do with her life, as long as she was happy and had a good pension plan.

  Susy Goodwin

  Ware, Hertfordshire

  SIR – My family joined me at the weekend to celebrate my birthday. We were playing some traditional party games when my six-year-old grandson jumped up and exclaimed, “This is almost fun.”

  I hope I live to hear him make the same comment, omitting the “almost”.

  Margaret Scattergood

  Knowle, West Midlands

  SIR – I was delighted to receive today the following letter from my ten-year-old grandson: “Thank you for my remote control car. It is really cool and it doesn’t matter th
at it doesn’t work.”

  Alice Cleland

  Devizes, Wiltshire

  SIR – Thank goodness one is not expected to write a thank-you letter to one’s husband. I would definitely have struggled to write one on receiving, some years ago, a set of blue car headlamps and a twin-tone horn.

  Sandra Hawke

  Andover, Hampshire

  SIR – My eight-year-old granddaughter may have shown a degree of prescience beyond her years when she was recently heard to say that first there is childhood, then the teenage years and finally adultery.

  Mike Spragg

  Great Yarmouth, Norfolk

  Rubbish date

  SIR – Perhaps I should forget Tinder, internet dating or more recently Love in the Countryside: it would seem all the men are down at the tip. The queue was 40-deep on Saturday.

  Girls, you’ll have to be up early though to catch these worms as it was at eight o’clock in the morning.

  Ellie Withers

  Hurst, Berkshire

  Indecisive proposal

  SIR – “Regular sex boosts the memory of over-fifties”, says your headline.

  I had intended to show this report to my wife. I forgot.

  Nigel Hawkins

  Braunton, Devon

  SIR – I was born in 1930 and my only sibling, my brother, was born in 1913.

  Did my mother have the longest headache known to medical science or did my father get his memory back?

  Joe Hill

  St Agnes, Cornwall

  SIR – Scientists have found that sex and sleep are the keys to real happiness. Presumably not at the same time?

  Roy Hughes

  Marlbrook, Worcestershire

  SIR – I note that the current birth rate is falling. Would this be connected with the relative unattractiveness of the male of the species by virtue of the mass of body paintings they now sport?

  Graham Jones

  Tytherington, Cheshire

  Stop meeting me at McDonald’s

  SIR – I would be delighted if the hairstyle known as “Meet me at McDonald’s” was banned, not just by schools but by the government. It would stop me having to peer at groups of lanky male youths to see which one, if any, is my nephew.

  Extending the ban to the words sweet, legend and sick might even win my vote.

  James Dixon

  Stanningfield, Suffolk

  SIR – Occasionally my late husband would shave off his beard at the start of a holiday so that the children and I could see what he really looked like.

  Our joint opinion was always the same and, after the two-week break, he would return to work supporting a handsome and dignified growth.

  Zoe Percy

  Orpington, Kent

  SIR – My very bald grandfather was a dignified and loyal man, but changed his barber after many years following this exchange.

  Grandfather (being invited to the chair): “Shall I take my coat off?”

  Barber: “You don’t really need to take your hat off.”

  Mik Shaw

  Goring-by-Sea, West Sussex

  Black shoe diaries

  SIR – I overheard the following exchange in a supermarket queue some years ago.

  Mother to daughter: “I need some new black shoes.”

  Daughter: “But you’ve got some black shoes, Mother.”

  “Yes, but your Uncle Arthur’s very ill.”

  Jacqueline Atwell

  Felbridge, Surrey

  SIR – If sunglasses are now being used for their intended purpose, instead of as hair bands, is it too much to hope that caps may soon start to be worn the right way round?

  Russell Parkes

  Penshurst, Kent

  SIR – My wife is unimpressed by camouflage trousers because, as she rightly points out, they are still easily recognisable as trousers.

  Eldon Sandys

  Pyrford, Surrey

  SIR – Why in recent years have men’s trouser zips been shortened from eight inches to six inches? It is very inconvenient.

  Timothy Collett

  Ashtead, Surrey

  Tent poles apart

  SIR – Judith Woods writes in her column that, when camping with her husband, “his tent erection is as strong and stable as anything decreed by Kubla Khan”. Even during our honeymoon under canvas in Scotland my own wife has never been as complimentary.

  Dr John Garside

  Thirsk, North Yorkshire

  Pole vaulting into a hotel bed

  SIR – We have just returned from a night away and for the second time I discovered that, while our hotel bed was luxuriously comfortable, it was too high off the floor. The only way I succeeded in getting onto the bed was in a most undignified fashion with my husband pushing my posterior and catapulting me into the air so I landed spread-eagled like a stranded whale.

  If hotels are determined to pursue this high-bed culture, I feel they should provide either a trampoline or a vaulting pole.

  Margaret Hancock

  Yateley, Hampshire

  SIR – Why are hotel rooms so full of unnecessary cushions? On a recent visit to an Oxfordshire hotel I counted no fewer than seven piled up on the bed like a mini mountain range.

  William Foot

  Walberton, West Sussex

  SIR – There should be a tight corner in hell reserved for the designers of duvet covers with very small openings.

  As an American friend of mine once put it, it’s like trying to push 2lbs of melted butter up a wildcat’s rear end with a red-hot gimlet.

  Graham Masterton

  Tadworth, Surrey

  Loose screw

  SIR – I was highly amused by your recent article about handling the father-in-law from hell. Fortunately my husband seems to have a very good relationship with his future son-in-law, and when they recently moved into a new property, my husband went over to help with some DIY.

  Struggling with a screw fitting, my husband asked if he had any lubricant. Future son-in-law (English not being his first language) disappeared into the bedroom and came back a few minutes later proffering a tube of KY jelly.

  Husband politely declined and suggested olive oil instead.

  Shirley Batten-Smith

  Watford, Hertfordshire

  All the Presidents Club men

  SIR – My father used to say that when an Englishman drank too much he became mildly amorous and very boring. After the furore of the Presidents Club, it looks as if they will have to make do with the latter.

  John Rawlins

  Bishops Caundle, Dorset

  SIR – At the risk of being vilified, I feel it should also be noted that drunken women in a similar scenario are not much better. I have witnessed alcohol-fuelled hen parties doing much the same to male waiters; on one particular occasion one poor chap was chased on to a table and denuded by a phalanx of baying women.

  The remaining waiters locked themselves in the kitchen until the venue had been cleared.

  (Ms) H. Gelder

  Hillmorton, Warwickshire

  SIR – And to cap it all, the apostrophe had been omitted from the club’s name.

  Bob Shute

  Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire

  #MaeToo

  SIR – I wonder what Mae West, with her aphorism “Better to be looked over than to be overlooked”, would have made of the #MeToo movement?

  Alan Duncalf

  Bampton, Devon

  SIR – You can imagine my dismay many years ago when my wonderful 65-year-old secretary asked if she could have a private word with me, a young managing director, about sexual harassment.

  After sitting down in my office she said: “Yes, I’m not getting enough of it.”

  Tim Williams

  Hungerford, Berkshire

  SIR – The only positive aspect to the ban on wolf whistling is that I can tell myself that its illegality is the reason I no longer attract such attention.

  Jennie Gibbs

  Goring-by-Sea, West Sussex

  SIR
– When I was in the Air Force, in the 1950s, one of the girls in our billet had a date with an airman at the camp cinema. An hour later she came storming back in. We asked her what had happened.

  “He lobbed his thing into my hand so I stubbed my cigarette out on it. He won’t do that again.”

  Changed days.

  Jacqueline McCrindle

  Prestwick, Ayrshire

  SIR – When I left school to go to college in the late 1950s, my grandmother, who was born in 1876, advised me to carry a hatpin in my handbag. The pin was quite a common accessory at that time, judging by the number of yelps one heard when visiting the cinema.

  Pam McEntyre

  Mollington, Cheshire

  SIR – When growing up, I was told that it was bad manners to walk around with one’s hands in one’s pockets. However, it would seem that this is now the safest option for us men.

  James Richardson

  Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex

  SIR – I was somewhat nonplussed by the seemingly over-familiar presence of the lady immediately behind me in the bus queue on a recent visit to Majorca. It was only later that I realised her accomplice had removed my wallet from the side-pocket of my shorts.

  Mike Leaper

  Eastbourne, East Sussex

  SIR – My wife, squeezing between tables at our bridge club, apologised when she brushed accidentally against an elderly, retired Perthshire farmer.

  He replied: “It’s a’richt, lassie. The spirit is willing, but the engine’s buggered.”

  George K. McMillan

  Perth

  SIR – Hopefully the current furore regarding inappropriate sexual contact will signal an end to the awkward continental habit of intrusive social kissing and a welcome return to the safe British handshake.