THE Fly in the Ointment has my sympathy in his Home Office tribulations.

Thieves no longer wear striped football jerseys, nor do they have a bag marked “swag” over their shoulders. As he has found, it is not possible to stop such obtrusive calls. I used to shorten the conversation by saying, “I will have to speak to Matron”.

However, I have now found that it is very therapeutic to have to hand near the telephone a very old fashioned warning device.

It is one that is clearly understood in any language, and requires no dialogue.

I am advised that it may even bring a pain to the ears of the offender. A referee’s whistle.

Walter Cuthbert Knutsford