......way back when we played Newton Heath off the park and stuffed them rigid.........that 'reporter' in the NOTW (Ray Ryan) wrote an entire report and only ever refered to the R&W tw@ts as United....and I E Mailed him to point out the error of his ways......hey guess what, he has eventually got back to me!

Well, three months is not bad for a NOTW reporter I supoose, although in his first paragraph he gives away his counting skills a little bit.

Sorry Softie, dont expect an apology, but his 'grovelling' isn't bad!

========================================================== Dear Ken Firstly my apologies for the delay in responding to your original e-mail sent to me. I am in the office for the first time in six months and your email was not forwarded to me. Therefore it was nothing to to with a response being "above my immense stature" to bother to reply.

Of course, you are quite right in your letter that there were two Uniteds playing in the Newcastle v Man Utd game. I only used the term United to refer to Man Utd for simplistic reasons. I always refer to Newcastle as the Toon, Magpies, Black and White army, etc. There was absolutely no offence intended.

The problem is when you have to write 1,000 words by the time the final whistle blows, you cannot always get nicknames, references, etc 100 per cent right even though we would like to.

Anyway apologies again for the time delay in replying to you and thanks for the taking the trouble to point out my downfalls. Best wihes, Ray Ryan ==================================================================

Is he saying that Newton Heath are simpletons....methinks so................mind you.....if he has to write 1,000 words for the report, he could save himself a bit of time by simply adding Manchester in front of United so that every time he writes it, he double his output!

-- Anonymous, May 09, 2000

Answers

Well 'Manchester' is such a long word...could be difficult for him to remember how to spell it, necessitating constant dictionary consultation which would actually decrease his productivity. Probably. ;-)

-- Anonymous, May 09, 2000

Speaking of dictionaries Ciara, I've just spent 10 minutes with one trying to work out what you were saying :o)))

-- Anonymous, May 09, 2000

Nah Ciara.....I think you're wrong......it's just that if he keeps looking it up, he will have to be retrained from scratch all over again!

-- Anonymous, May 09, 2000

If it's too much to write then I'd like to point out that the word "scum" is shorter than "Manchester" or "United" or "reporter" or "Ray Ryan".

-- Anonymous, May 10, 2000

Oi Jonno......you haven't earned the right to refer to us as scum

We are the Pride of all Europe, the Cock of the North

-- Anonymous, May 10, 2000

Do you hate Sunderland and Boro of course ? la la la

-- Anonymous, May 10, 2000