My favourite letter ever written to a local newspaper

Local newspapers have acquired an often deserved reputation for headlines or articles that are either amusing or poorly written. Even my local newspaper in Sheffield – The Star – has been mentioned by the late lamented Linda Smith on QI for its headline “Worksop man dies of natural causes”. Which is at least a proper sentence as opposed to its usual choice of three random nouns, such as “Bus strike threat”, which has led to a long-running joke with friends.  There is also the day when in a front page article it decided to describe a couple who had been convicted of benefit fraud as “the thieving scroungers of Castlebeck Avenue”, which you could argue is a factual statement but it perhaps doesn’t meet the standards of journalism excellence that even many local newspapers normally aim for.  In fact, whilst I am picking on The Star (and hoping this doesn’t lead to them trying to ruin any of my future career plans), my favourite free Sheffield magazine Now Then does an occasional fisking of the newspaper in its Starwipe column – subtitled “Reading the Sheffied Star so you don’t have to” – and the best has to be is its coverage of a horrendously sexist and patronising article on female councillors written by its (female) political editor, (and a former colleague of mine on Tapton School’s magazine).  To read it follow this link and find page 17 of the PDF, although admittedly it is probably only really amusing if you also know something about Sheffield politics.

However, despite this amusement at a newspaper’s expense, the one part of its content that is entirely in the hands of the rest of the community – the letters page – is often worse.  The letter page of newspapers has generated Tunbridge Wells Bingo, (which now seems impossible to find except bizarrely in the archive of Sheffield Forum – see the post by Andy C about halfway down the page), but when clearing out some old newspapers at home today I stumbled on a letter from the ever brilliant Cambrian News.

For those not versed in the pleasures of the Cambrian News – the local newspaper for mid Wales – this is a newspaper with a certain amount of reputation when it comes to its journalism.  Known by some locals as the “Pre-Cambrian News” for the fact that many of its stories are old even before the weekly edition of the paper is printed, it has also generated its own Facebook Group – the Cambrian News Headline Appreciation Society.  Top billing on this site is the now infamous “I didn’t know guinea pigs could swim” headline, and I see that this week has also generated the excellent “Help… Dog urine is seeping into my flat”.  So after that extensive build-up, my favourite letter ever comes from the 11th October 2007 edition and I still cannot decide if it is a deliberate piss-take, (if you’ll excuse the pun), or a serious complaint:

Urinals too high off ground in new harbour toilet block

Madam,

On a recent visit to Aberystwyth, I went to the newly-designed toilet at the harbour.

The urinals were very high.  Another visitor who was five feet two inches tall had to go into the cubicle because of this.  Incidentally, there are no boys’ urinals there.

Thinking more deeply about the height of urinals following this visit, I would also like to point out that Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Morrisons in our area have urinals set 12 to 14 inches off the ground, much lower than in Aberystwyth.”

Your etc,
Roger Pye, Kinerton, Herefordshire