30 AUGUST 1997, Page 22

Just another oik

Sir: Simon Blow (Packages of misery', 23 August) regrets the age of mass tourism, but his own youthful expedition to Tunisia to stay in the villa of wealthy Europeans was an exercise in the same genre.

The oiks who over the last 50 years have thronged Benidorm in search of fish and chips and brown ale are true heirs to the genteel English who, for a century before them, filled the Mediterranean littoral with golf courses and teashops. An ability to talk to the Arab servants in French does not dis- tinguish Blow from Bloggs — or travel from tourism.

lain Burgess

4 Cedars Road, Hampton Wick, Middlesex