15 OCTOBER 1983, Page 20

Clean joke

Sir: What frisson, down here in the sticks, to see my name in your instructive and amusing journal — and for your reviewer, Christopher Hawtree (17 September), to place such a gloriously disgusting construction on my Dick Turpin clerihew! He who laughs last, they used to tell me at school, has only just seen the joke, and I'm still giggling on and off. F. Pitt-Kethley, by the way, is not a man at all. Shocking really.

John Whitworth

20 Lovell Road, Rough Common, Canterbury, Kent