Dear 'I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue' mailing list member, If you are free on the evening of Sunday 29th February, live in the London area and are keen not to miss the final recording of the next series of Barry and Graeme's 'Hamish & Dougal - You'll Have Had Your Tea', you can get free tickets to the show from the BBC Ticket Unit. See details below. All the best (and apologies if you live too far away to come) Jon Naismith & Janet Staplehurst. GET YOUR FREE TICKETS to witness for yourselves the further exploits of Hamish & Dougal in the final recording of the second series of their hilarious Radio 4 comedy “You’ll Have Had Your Tea” starring Barry Cryer and Graeme Garden with Alison Steadman as their housekeeper Mrs Naughtie & Jeremy Hardy as the local Laird. Fans of their many appearances in Radio 4’s “I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue”, will be thrilled to hear that Hamish and Dougal, those delightfully eccentric and frequently misunderstood Scotsmen, are to make a second series of their own radio vehicle. For a rollicking laughter-fest and more jokes than you can shake a stick at come to The Cochrane Theatre, Southampton Row, London WC1B 4AP (nearest tube: Holborn)on Sunday 29th February Doors open 7.15pm - Show starts 7.30pm To claim your free tickets – simply telephone the BBC Ticket Unit on 020 8576 1227 or email radio.ticket.unit@bbc.co.uk or apply online at www.bbc.co.uk/tickets

Not a teacher, I work in educational supplies. But I've rather lost faith in the education system recently.

In my youth, having been a dumpee a few times, I speculated that it was much easier being on the dumping side, since you knew it was coming. When catapaulted into the opposite position, I realised that being dumped is, in fact, considerably simpler, since you didn't know it was coming.

Why do I mention this, you ask? Every so often I'm asked to review papers for academic journals, and until today I've never had cause to recommend a rejection... and for some reason I feel rather bad about doing so. But then, we can't be accused of falling standards now, can we?

[rab] It's what publishers have to do all the time, but still not pleasant to be in the judgement seat. Do you know, or are you likely to meet, this person?

It's not nice to be negative, but then you can't reward bad work, can you?

Or you could reject another - as two negatives make a positive!

[rab] You'll get over it. Consider it a necessary herd-thinning.

[rab] Count yourself lucky that the editors are sending you such good papers. In my field at least, rejection rates in the top journals run 90-95% or so. I certainly have to recommend rejection much more often than acceptance.

[rab] It's positively a public service to see that rubbish doesn't reach print. In the past I've rejected several papers for triviality, several for technical slipshoddery, one for outright crackpottery, and one for unwittingly reproducing (but not as well) some of the results from a certain fundamental paper that hardly anyone has read but everyone cites (including the authors of the rejected paper). I assume your refereeing process is anonymous?