“THE AWARD-WINNING Canadian writer Margaret Atwood is developing a remote book-signing device that will allow readers to get their novels autographed without the author having to traipse to bookshops across the globe. The idea occurred to her while undertaking gruelling tours last spring.” (The Guardian, January 8, 2005).

And about time, too. You do not know how irritating you lot can be. Sign this, please reply to that, I am a media student and was wondering the other. There are days, I tell you, when it is as much as any serious writer can do to get finished before News at Noon.

When I started this job a colleague took me aside and explained the basic principle of letter response. “You write once, they write once, you are even,” he said. “You don’t want a pen pal.” Of course, this was before the invention of e-mail, when the indignant missive became a national pastime, spelling went out the window and any yahoo with a five-minute coffee break and an unexpressed thought could dash off an angry@msn message to the journalist of his choice. We have become a nation of complainers, which explains the outrage at Jerry Springer — The Opera when pre-information super-highway Jerry Springer: The Insult To Our Intelligence slipped under the radar all but unnoticed.

So it has come to this. Labour-saving signed books and labour-saving correspondence. What used to take pen, paper and bit of reflection, can now be txted or dashed off in a matter of seconds OFTEN in SUDDEN OUTBREAKS of CAPITAL LETTERS for no APPARENT reason. Still, who am I to stand in the way of progress? Here is my newly patented pro-forma reply. Tick the boxes as you see fit.

Dear

• Sir;
• Madam;
• Other;
• Mother

  Many thanks for your

• letter;
• e-mail;
• death threat;
• ransom note

  which I read with

• interest;
• concern;
• mounting alarm;
• members of Special Branch in attendance.

  I was particularly impressed by

• your intelligent rationalisation of this complex issue;
• your strong views on the matter;
• the green ink;
• your inventive and repeated use of the word evisceration

  
  and while I do not think I will be taking up your generous offer to

• speak at your next meeting;
• go on a blind date with your sister;
• screw myself;
• distribute my entrails over a wide area of Cambridgeshire

  
  I hope you will not take this

• personally;
• to heart;
• as any form of encouragement or validation;
• as a message from next door’s dog to do his Satanic bidding again.

  
  On the subject of

• hanging;
• the war in Iraq;
• custard;
• Millwall’s chances of promotion

  
  may I first say that

• I entirely appreciate your point of view;
• I stand by my opinions completely;
• if it’s a battle of wits you want, I never fight with an unarmed man;
• a chainsaw used in that way will not solve anything

  
  and it would be a real step forward if

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