Dear Mary

21 March 2009

Your problems solved

Q. I recently attended a wonderful bijou literary festival in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. My problem is that one of the most interesting talks, featuring Edward Lucas and Mary Dejevsky, was marred for me by about a fifth of the audience coughing so loudly as to drown out some of the most interesting points. How is it that you never hear a fifth of the audience coughing their guts up in the cinema but only when someone is giving a fascinating live performance on a stage? Do you agree with me, Mary, that since the Aldeburgh Literary Festival is wildly oversubscribed every year, the organisers should run a blacklist of coughers and use this to prune the ticket allocation?

M.W., Wiltshire

A. Many live performers share the view of the late Harold Pinter that audience coughing is often passive aggressive. Yet it would be cruel to penalise genuine coughers in this way. Instead the Festival organisers would do well to seek sponsorship from a lozenge-maker like Fisherman’s Friend, an appropriate sponsor for a seaside festival. With limited-edition literary festival mini-packs of the lozenges given to each member of the audience as they file into the venues there should be no excuse for anyone to cough.

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Rachel D

March 26th, 2009 2:54am Report this comment

Dear Mary,
I am a regular reader of your column, which I peruse on-line from Australia. Each week I am frustrated by the many steps I have to go through to find you. First I click on 'Life' on the top bar on the home page, which, in a charming homage to the Twentieth Century, does not incorporate a drop-down menu. When the 'Life' page opens, I scroll down to find you and click on 'Dear Mary' which takes me to another page which also requires me to click on 'Dear Mary' before I actually get to read your helpful advice. I am concerned that advancing years and a family history of arthritis in the hands will make it increasingly difficult to keep clicking through to you. Mary, what should I do?

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