12 OCTOBER 1991, Page 28

Fat red line

Sir: Your correspondent asks (14 Septem- ber) why the Russians one sees queuing for food are so fat. The answer is because bread is plentiful and exceedingly cheap.I have a more intriguing question. Why, when it rains so much in England, are the people one meets in the tube so smelly? Robert Haupt

29 Kalayevskaya Street, Moscow