Stinky and Perky

SIR: Jeremy Lewis’s suggested advert for All Bran (April issue) had already been outdone by the real thing. In 1944 or 1945 the product was advertised in a strip cartoon featuring a bright perky typist and her listless, lank-haired colleague. In the first picture the latter is saying, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong. I have no energy.’ Miss Perky says, ‘Your trouble is constipation.’ The punch line comes in the next picture with the bubble bearing the words, ‘Everything in the in-tray, nothing in the out-tray, and the whole thing pending.’ I couldn’t make it up. Philip Symmons, Beyries, France.