Call me old-fashioned if you will but I am astonished David Panter should display such bad manners as to address Julie Burchill as "Julie" throughout his reply to her sprightly article when, by the very nature of the subject, it is evident they are far from friends.

If, in the Army, I had been so familiar as to address my superiors in this fashion, it would have been a stint in the guardhouse - or worse - for me. And rightly so.

I suggest Mr Panter's standing orders could be usefully augmented by a volume on etiquette.

-Charles Goode, Third Avenue, Hove