What I really want to know is how many hate letters there were. And, even more, what was in them.

I mean, how do you construct a hate letter? Do you just say 'Micky, you're a ratbag' or is it better to enclose something - a dead seagull perhaps, a lock of Bobby's hair, or one of those rubber daggers you get in joke shops with red paint on their tips?

Now I'm no authority on the old poison pen stuff, although I did have a premonition that Saturday's SCR phone-in would be full of callers standing in their lounges with their thumbs behind the lapels of their best blazers making speeches about how dreadful it all is. No disappointment there then. Every second caller's favourite subject seemed to be what Basil Fawlty once called the Bleeding Obvious.

The facts are quite simple. There are a lot of people about who drop litter, drive to the very front of motorway lane closure queues before pushing in at the last minute or misbehave when following England abroad. There are some who manage to do all this, and more, at the same time, and some of them undoubtedly follow the Albion. Sad but that's how it is.

But for every one of them there are 100 people like Mark, a Brighton station taxi driver who on Tuesday drove all the way to Nottingham in a minibus he hired and on Wednesday, having driven me to Brunswick Square, got out of his cab and shook my hand just because he discovered I was a fellow fan.

So let's not get depressed about a few malcontents. They happen, but not often.

If you want to get depressed, you should have read the Telegraph last week. It was enough to make you cry. Or, indeed, laugh. On Saturday a representative from that journal was scurrying around Withdean trying to find out what you call the trees behind the south stand. Oaks? Chestnuts? No matter that he missed who scored the Albion's first goal - yes he did, he had to ask a spectator - the big question on his lips concerned those trees. Let no one stand between a national press man and what in the trade are known as background colour pieces.

And consider this line from Monday's Telegraph. "From the Stadio Delle Alpi... to a set of soggy school playing fields near Horsham, Peter Taylor's career has taken a deep dive." (The fields, incidentally, are the rural facilities of Christ's Hospital School, damp because of rain.)

The reporter could have drafted his metro-chic piece at any time since Peter Taylor got the sack.

It was blindingly - not to say bleedingly - obvious, using the same sort of words as did all the other patronising reports on Taylor's appointment knocked out by Fleet Street's elite in the last fortnight.

Their view is that whilst everyone will read 2,000 words on a match between Charlton and Derby, no one will read anything on a team outside the premiership unless you come up with some sort of entertaining angle.

If everyone comes up with the same angle, so be it. Saves having to dream up something new.

The press facilities at Withdean are getting stretched these days. The other week I noticed three national newspapers sitting next to each other in ordinary seats.

A fortnight ago my brother was due to photograph a famous lady but she wouldn't let him near until he showed her previous examples of his work.

Perhaps Albion press officer Paul Camillin could adopt a similar procedure to solve the Withdean overcrowding problem.

ANNA swallow