The other day while laying the fire, and reading, as you do, the month old newspapers that I was scrunching up before laying the sticks. I came across this gem of a letter in The Sunday Times. It was in a section of the letter column devoted to pouring scorn on Germaine Greer for an article in which, I'm guessing here, she had the temerity to suggest Diana Princess of Wales didn't walk on water, didn't cure the sick with a glance, and may well have gone to the toilet from time to time like the rest of us. From the general tone of the letters you would have thought Ms Greer had accused The Sainted Diana of being someone who regularly snorted pure heroin off the nipples of prepubescent girls before pummelling kittens to death with a meat tenderizer. Most of them were just the sad outpourings of lonely people. One of them just made me laugh,

Power Play: What a pity Diana died when she did. Had she survived to inspire the men of our nation, our rugby team would be winning every match and the war in Iraq would be won.

Ken Wilson
Manchester

I suspect this was written tongue firmly in cheek just to see if the paper would be foolish enough to print it, but it wasn't hard to see the ten year dead, simpering, Hug an AIDS orphan, anti-landmine, people's Princess as some sort of British boy's comic cartoon hero. Smashing the Taliban with one hand, and, with the other, kicking the winning conversion in the Six Nations Championship before nipping off to the showers with Johnny Wilkinson and the rest of the team*.

Sort of like Tupper 'The Tough of the Track' who used to appear in 'The Victor' when I were a lad, a working class hero who would eat vast quantities of Fish and Chips, probably fought Germans with his bare hands "Achtchung! Die Englander!" but always made it back, despite all the odds, to win the Three Peaks Race in his bare feet - but with tits and a tiara.

What's the point of all this? I have no idea, except for the past day or so I have had the nagging desire to do a comic strip in which Diana does just that; Diana of the SAS blasting her way through hordes of Kalashnikov wielding Taliban with her trusty British Tommy Gun while barking out lines like "Like eat lead, yah? You Ragheads, Okay? Cool!" Before jumping in her trusty British Harrier Jump Jet and whizzing back to Twickers to run out with the England team and thrash the Froggies 53 - 51 after a nail-biting climax.

I am so tempted...

*Okay, I'll give you that bit. I can imagine that bit - her climbing into the showers with the entire England rugby team - I don't want to, but I could. If I wanted to. Which I don't. (I also know you don't kick rugby balls with your hands, either of them.)