UR TV CAST

This story will forever fix the picture in my mind.And my next Cartier-Bresson moment will surely occur in the English countryside.The show at the Biblioth?e nationale de France, in Paris, closes on 27 July
More from Andreas Whittam Smith. The way a journalist does his research is this He first prints a questionable statement in a newspaper. Then readers who are more knowledgeable than he is send in letters and e-mails to correct him. Modestly he admits their superior knowledge, learns from what they say, and finally prints their corrections in his column and gets paid for doing so

The way a journalist does his research is this He first prints a questionable statement in a newspaper. You may think that all I am doing is paying tribute to the sagacity of my readers In fact, I am allowing them to write the column for me. Thank you, everyone.First of all, Mrs Elliott of Upminster upbraids me for thinking that there was such a thing in America as “Loony Tunes” There isn’t and wasn’t It was “Loony Toons”, where “toon” is short for “cartoon”.

Oops.Secondly, a letter from Dr Cowan of Newcastle upon Tyne, about Sars. I recently invented a young doctor who said that “acute” and “severe” meant the same thing.”Sorry,” says Dr Cowan. “‘Severe’ in medical practice is not synonymous with ‘acute’ and no young doctor would think so. ‘Mild’ and ’severe’ are a measure of the severity of an illness, whereas ‘acute’ and ‘chronic’ refer to its duration. Thus a broken leg is acute, psoriasis is chronic, a common cold is a mild acute disease, whereas Sars is severe and acute.

Osteoarthritis is a disease that is chronic, and some diseases such as depression are often characterised by acute exacerbations of a chronic condition Got it?”Yep Got it “Acute” means “short-lived” Thanks, doc Won’t make that mistake again. And straight on to a letter from Mr Chesher of Leigh-on-Sea, who appreciated the bookseller I quoted as saying that when he said a book was in “good” condition, this meant “not very good”.”Further to that,” (Chesher speaking), “have you noticed the more recent slippage of the word ‘large’ into ‘medium’?”I buy my underpants at a well-known high street retailer who used to display them in three sizes, ’small’, ‘medium’ and ‘large’. Some years ago the number of sizes was extended by one, named ‘X-large’. This week I noticed that a fifth size has been added, called ‘XX-large’. This means that the median, the 3rd out of 5, called ‘large’, in fact now means ‘medium’!”Excellent.