Sir – As I approach my 60th birthday I find myself increasingly attracted to the musings of that old curmudgeon John Phillpott.

What he said about Watney’s Red Barrel is absolutely true, it was truly awful and made you throw up before you could get drunk. But surely there is another way to counter teenage drunkeness, as what John is proposing is too awful to contemplate.

Clive Smith
Malvern Link