Professional, but tedious

I HAVE not missed Christa Ackroyd during her five-week absence from TV (Yorkshire Post, April 12). Despite the other members of the excellent BBC Look North team, her bumptious presence was the main reason why on occasions I had turned to its lower budget but competent counterpart Calendar.

To be fair, Ackroyd is a good professional, but I find her banter tedious. Her favourite victim, the likeable weather forecaster Paul Hudson, is more than capable of holding his own and is funny with it but one senses he could do without the interruptions and feigned boredom which look very much like attempts to steal the show.

Budgie keeps me company

From: Ray Bass, Nelson, Lancashire.

WITH reference to the letter about lonely people dying early (Yorkshire Post, April 12), I would like to pass on some advice.

My wife died four years ago so I got a budgie. The winters seem shorter and my budgie whistles to the radio, flies around when I let him out of his cage and keeps me company.

Budgies are inexpensive to keep and mine has certainly helped me with being on my own.

Dorset rascals

From: John Bishop, Kirkby Malzeard, Ripon.

SO you say Fat Rascals are a Yorkshire institution launched by Betty’s in 1983. I think you have made a mistake.

My mother, a Dorset lass, used to make them as a special treat for us when I was a lad in the 1920s. She had learned to do it from her mother, my grandmother, in the latter years of the 19th century.

I wonder if any Yorkshire Post reader can throw light on the real origin of this desirable comestible?