I couldn't help but click on the link "this very website five years ago" (Thursday's letters). Oh how much tidier the BBC website looked in 2004! Does that answer your constant query to readers on how much we have noticed about your new(est) layout?
JennyT, NY Brit (now a NJ Brit)

Have the BBC made an executive decision about WHICH day the moon landing occurred? I saw that it was documented as July 20th 1969 on this morning's Breakfast programme, but because of the time-difference between here and America, it was 3am on the 21st July in the UK when Neil Armstrong actually stepped onto the moon's surface. As the moon has no time zones, shouldn't UTC/GMT be used to describe this moment? That would make the date of this momentous event July 21st 1969.
Philip Meehan, Goring-by-Sea, UK

Apparently the photographer Kevin Mazur had an adrenaline rush like the first time he photographed Michael Jackson moonwalking. A PHOTO of Michael Jackson moonwalking? Er, wouldn't that look exactly like Michael Jackson walking?
Bob Peters, Leeds, UK

Re. the latest story on the Air France crash, which cites un-inflated lifejackets as evidence that the crash was unexpected. As everyone knows from pre-flight briefings, lifejackets should only be inflated after exiting a crashed plane so as to avoid hindering escape. The story reports that the plane "broke on impact" with a "strong vertical acceleration," so presumably there were no survivors to escape. A more important point, therefore, is: were the recovered bodies wearing lifejackets?
Tim Evans, Oxford, UK

It may be that professional sports people have a different concept of personal comfort from mere mortals but I venture to suggest that underpants you stick to are other than lucky.
Paul Clare, Marlow, UK

Having lost the little sweepstake we were having as to when you'd call time on the punny business names (I'd given it another day), we're now taking bets (based on the 5 year old letters page) as to how many 'I know the topic is closed but...' letters will appear in the next week.
Shiz, Cheshire, UK

Monitor: Shiz, you know Monitor would never stoop that low. When a conversation thread is over, it's over. O.V.E.R.

Seeing as you have now, thankfully, brought the shutters down on the punning shop name conversation, may I heartily congratulate one shop who resolutely stands firm against the overwhelming pressure to pun. It's a florist. In Epping. Called... The Epping Flower Shop. Bravo!
Matthew D, Lincoln

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Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.

1. Fred Perry was also table tennis world champion.
More details

2. Mrs Slocombe's first name was Betty.
More details (the Guardian)

3. The UK is developing a quarter of the world's wave technologies.
More details (New York Times)

4. Press-ups come in many guises, such as the "seal", "frog" and "donkey-kick".
More details

5. The keffiyeh, a chequered scarf worn mostly by Arab men, and made famous by Yasser Arafat, is now mostly made in China.
More details

6. Vegetarians are generally less likely than meat eaters to develop cancer.
More details

7. The Duke of Kent requested that players no longer bow to the royal box at Wimbledon, in 2003.
More details

8. Richard and Judy did not pick the books that featured in their book club.
More details

9. Michael Jackson patented one item - the special shoes he used in the stage version of Smooth Criminal.
More details

10. Saddam Hussein once hired the James Bond director, Terence Young, to make a promotional Iraqi film.
More details

Seen 10 things? Send us a picture to use next week. Thanks to Vic Barton-Walderstadt from Welwyn Garden City for this week's picture of 10 bales of hay near St Albans.

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Winning entries in the Caption Competition.

This week, two women in Alistair Darling masks take part in a protest against bingo taxation in Parliament Square. But what's being said?

The competition is now closed. Full rules can be seen here [PDF].
Thanks to all who entered. The prize of a small amount of kudos to the following:

6. mcseaniew wrote:
'Hurry up, Edna, he says he wants this budget in by five.'

5. Rob Falconer wrote:
Hey! What if we can show that Gurkhas enjoy bingo too?

4. TheRealCatherineO wrote:
"..and your boy Zaphod has grown into a fine young man."

3. 21gardener wrote:
Look, here we are in episode 1 of Torchwood - I know they've cut the budget, but will anyone believe that we're alien invaders?

2. Kudosless wrote:
"According to the map, this should be a good place to sit under pigeons"

1. omnipotent wrote:
You forgot to carry the one, the GDP balances now!

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Now that the news has sunk in and the public have had time to come to terms with the death of a pop icon, the papers have found their voice, and there's no shortage of follow-up material in the press... about the late Mollie Sugden.

The Sun gives a run down of Sugden's "favourite... pussy innuendos" alongside a story which notes that after Sugden's and Wendy Richard's deaths this year, there are just three surviving members of the Are You Being Served sitcom. Can you guess them?

Over at the Daily Mail, Jan Moir (she of the Wimbledon-hating fraternity) refuses to stoop so low as simply just listing all those pussy gags. Instead she frames it with recollections of watching the show and poignant thoughts on why it wouldn't make the cut in today's TV climate.

And at the Daily Telegraph, Melissa Kite, who Paper Monitor once had a humbling encounter with while out reporting the story of the fox hunting ban ... uses Sugden's death to reflect on the British love of the double entendre.

Were you to use such a phrase in front of a Frenchman, Kite reveals, he would have little understanding of what you were on about. A double entendre in French is actually called a sous-entendu (or "under-meaning"). Er, 10 things, are you listening?

Comedians today are too anatomical and lack the sort of richly layered subtlety that, er, defined Mrs Slocombe's pussy references, believes Kite.

A point that is perhaps proved by Andrew Collins's payoff in his Guardian tribute to Mrs Slocombe.

Sugden's death even makes the obituary pages of the New York Times, in a land where Are You Being Served proved to be a big hit.

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Welcome to the Weekly Bonus Question.

Each week the news quiz 7 days 7 questions will offer an answer. You are invited to suggest what the question might have been.

Suggestions should be sent using the COMMENTS BOX IN THIS ENTRY. And since nobody likes a smart alec, kudos will be deducted for predictability in your suggestions.

This week's answer is DOUBLING AS SAUNAS.

UPDATE 1800 BST: The correct question is, what have London buses been doing this week because drivers have been stopped from turning off the heaters during the heatwave?

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"I will hate you till the day I die" - Alain de Botton responds to a bad review.

Monsieur De Botton is not the first person to respond with feeling to a bad review. Here Philip Hensher writes amusingly of the history of such contretemps. But it's clear De Botton was particularly upset by Caleb Crain's review of The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.
More details (Caleb Crain's blog)

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Re Paper Monitor's thoughts on shorthand, as one of the swots who sits at the front of the class during speed tests, might I recommend using this: for "symbol"? Not having to take your pen off the paper rather helps with speed, too.
Sam Bannister, Portsmouth, UK

Unsung Heroes? Didn't Jackson Browne sing the praises of roadies in Stay?
Kieran Boyle, Oxford, England

Last night I got a rare seat on the train but was accused, and found guilty, of the crime of "getting off the train ahead of someone who had stood". What should my punishment be and what other commuter rules do readers think should be enshrined in law?
MCK, Stevenage

Re Schindler's Lifts - I'd always believed that there was an Otis (the lift company) office in Reading and when answering the phone they would say, "Otis, Reading". I was very disappointed recently to find its actually in Wokingham.
Paul, Plymouth, UK

So sorry, so very sorry, but I have to tell you that there is a mobile fish and chip van, regularly seen near here, called TA-DAH! The Frying Squad. The name has everything you could wish for - especially now I'm wearing my tank-top and platform soled boots. I just knew they would come back into fashion one day.
Roy Bennett, Abergavenny

The best punning shop name I've ever seen is a German florist on the corner of its street. For native German speakers its name simply means "Flower Corner", but English speakers and visitors are likely to chuckle at "Blumen Eck".
Chris Philpot, West Sussex, United Kingdom

Locally there's a hairdresser called Savoir Cheveux. Very few people know what it means or get the pun(s).
John Martin, Erie, USA

The punning shop names is an old old meme. I remember Dave Lee Travis doing them on Radio 1 when I was a teenager (that dates me!) I got a Radio 1 pen for giving him a fine example of nominative determinism in my local town: - One J. Weller, a Jeweller.
Caroline Brown, Rochester, UK

Monitor: LBQ keyring, Caroline?

There's a cleaning company in Surrey called Spruce Springclean which is clearly the winner of the best shop name pun contest, as documented on this very website five years ago.
Abigail, Brighton

Monitor: Which nicely brings the shutters down on this particular conversation thread. No more punning shop names, thanks.

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