Leaving aside his typically embarrassing puns, I share Chris Boswell's concern regarding the increasing lack of public toilet facilities in this city, not least as I enjoy a quiet drink in the open, preferably without it being unreasonably seized.

Richmond, for instance, would seem to have come up with the ideal solution, namely paying watering holes a few hundred quid a year to open up their loos to non-customers, without their running the humiliating and maybe painful risk of being frogmarched out of the premises by paid thugs.

Such establishments may also increase their trade slightly by so doing.

David Diment Riverside Court Oxford