STEAL HIS THUNDERRichard Strother enquires about robust replies to claims (see [2001] Gazette, 26 April, 17).

In the 1970s, Private Eye received a letter from a distinguished firm of London solicitors on behalf of a client, who claimed to have been libelled.

The letter ended with the thunderous exhortation: 'Our client's attitude to damages will be governed by the nature of your reply'.Reasons of propriety prevent me from relating the reply but it was Anglo Saxon, to the point, and extremely robust and is remembered with great affection by the magazine's readers.As I recall, the subsequent proceedings were struck out for want of prosecution.

Jonathan Austin, Boys & Maughan, Margate, Kent