bound to say, I see a perfectly healthy, in fact a rather beautiful epiglottis."

I actually owe to my wife the inspiration for the scene. Her great-uncle, Jon Stefansson, an Icelandic ENT doctor in Winnipeg, was called to examine the throat of a travelling Russian opera singer, Johanna Philipowska, whereupon after gazing into her open mouth and observing "the beauty of her epiglottis" he fell madly in love, so the story went, and married her.

Give a typewriter to a bunch of monkeys and they'll eventually bash out the complete works of Shakespeare. After listening to Ms Osbaldeston explore the technicalities of epiglottis vs uvula, I couldn't help but reflect on the extraordinary coincidence of the beautiful epiglottae of East European characters. I thought that Feedback might be interested in my feedback. After all, dealing with the concerns of its listeners is the programme's raison

d'etre.

But not a bit of it. While walls have gone down in East Germany, the guard has gone up at the BBC. The Stasi at least got back to you, but Roger Bolton? I left a message on his voicemail, emailed twice. All I received was an automated reply, giving a full list of BBC websites and an apology that "Due to the size of the mailbag, we are very sorry that we are unable to enter into any individual correspondence."

As with British Telecom, one feels the futility of pursuing it further other than to say that I would love to know from where Ms Osbaldeston derived the idea for her character's wonderful epiglottis; and if it's not my novel, I'm sure there's a fascinating story to be told. And I promise to give her the name of that literary festival.

Should anyone give a damn, ‘Secrets of the Sea’, is now out in Vintage paperback