When Engelbert Humperdinck beat the Beatles

Now that Kenneth Ball’s friend Anders Clausager has offered to write his obit for “Other lives” (Letters, 31 May), I will happily cede the field and turn my attention to Kenneth’s other concern: how to get in the birthday list. I have already written in proposing an “Other birthdays” column, and I now call upon fellow readers to make a great clamour until we win support for this democratic suggestion.
Fiona Collins
Carrog, Sir Ddinbych

• I agree that Like a Rolling Stone is the greatest record of all time, but it was only at No 8 in the chart when Ken Dodd’s Tears was No 1, so Dodd can hardly be said to have held Dylan off the top spot (Letters, 30 May). A greater travesty was Release Me by Engelbert Humperdinck keeping the Beatles’ greatest single, Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane, off the top in 1967.
John Rix
Rugby, Warwickshire

• Samuel Earle powerfully describes how exaggeration and falsification are fuelling the notion of culture wars (The ‘culture wars’ are a symptom, not the cause, of Britain’s malaise, 31 May). Perhaps we need a new word to describe this phenomenon: how about “hyperbollocks”?
Geoff Fordham
Telford, Shropshire

• What about HMS Ruritania as a name for the new “national ship” (Boris Johnson plans to sink £200m into new ship of state, 30 May)? After all, the supposed benefits of it to British exports are just as imaginary as Anthony Hope’s fictitious kingdom.
Allan Dare
Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire

• Dear Emma Beddington, there is a simple solution to your cat problem: a water pistol (I love my new garden – I just wish it didn’t come with a gang of neighbourhood cats, 1 June).
L Pearson
Paul, Cornwall

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