Deborah Hart (Letters, November 10) is unlikely to have her messages banned because they contain the word “socialist”, but rather because they contain the word “Cialis”, an anti-impotence drug. As an employee of the socialist magazine Tribune, spam filters blocking this word are the bane of my life.

(Oli Hart, letter to the Guardian 12 Nov 2007)

In the same day’s Grauniad: Russell Brand, a man for whom the word “egregious” (along with the words “simpering”, “little” and “tit”) might have been invented, ruefully considers his manifold misdeeds against womankind: “One day I had to write a victims’ list - a litany of the women I’d wronged as a result of my sexual addiction. I felt like Saddam Hussein trying to pick out individual Kurds”. Charming. “The women I clubbed with sex! / I broke them up like meringues”…

I must admit, I don’t altogether see the appeal. Of women, I mean*. There’s clearly something very wrong with any gender that lets Russell Brand put his “winky” (funny, my 7-year-old son calls it the same name) into quite so many of its constituents. Although in fairness to all the Bangkok prostitutes he goes on about, I don’t suppose they had an awful lot of say in the matter.

* This is patently untrue.