6 JANUARY 1996, Page 32

Crunch Line

`Did you see the red admiral this morning?'

The query slotted rather neatly, I thought, if edgeways, into a lull in his whirring all-electric garden. 'No.' And that was that.

But when his hoover made a defensive pass at a bronze leaf trespassing on the grass and missed, he felt obliged to add the crunch line, `I never watch TV before lunchtime.'

Sam Gardiner