Can writing pay? Well, up to a point, Lord Copper.* Woking Writers Circle member Alan Dale was happy to report at our May meeting that he had received £10 for a recent letter he had had published in What’s On TV praising the BBC’s dramatisation of Evelyn Waugh’s comic novel Decline and Fall.

Alan’s letter said: “Decline & Fall (BBC1) is a riotous, beautifully balanced slice of bitter-sweet period comedy. Jack Whitehall’s earnestly innocent Paul Pennyfeather is wonderfully contrasted by Douglas Hodge’s gravelly-voiced, paralytic Captain Grimes and Vincent Franklin’s spiritually tormented sadist manqué Prendergast. Stephen Graham’s Philbrick skilfully alternates menace and streetwise repartee, while David Suchet radiates duplicity and 1920s social hypocrisy as Dr Fagan.”

A tenner for a mini-review? More power to your set-top box, Alan.

*Sorry, wrong Evelyn Waugh novel. (Ed)