Paul Brett
Hospital Plan Insurance Services
22.10.1997

Dear Mr Brett,

You keep writing to me saying that I have won a TOP CASH AWARD and wondering why I hadn’t got back to you. Well, I’ll tell you. Shortly before my mother died, she made me promise to do three things: never eat in a little Chef, never to help old ladies across the road (‘They will only want to be helped back later, and then they’ll want to come and stay with you, and then they’ll try to take over’ she said) and never to accept free gifts. I promised. Later, I wondered if by “free gifts” she meant large cash blandishments or simply free CDs and lipstick samples stuck to the front of magazines, but it was too late to ask her.

I did once attend a spiritualist séance where the medium got in touch with my mum, and I was about to ask her what kind of free gifts she meant, when the medium said: ‘Hold on – your mother has thought of a couple of other things she doesn’t want you to do either’, so I asked her to lose contact immediately before she could tell me.

I hope you understand.

Yours sincerely