Hello, it’s Peter here and welcome to Thursday’s Levy Letter. I hope your day 
is going well and I hope you’ll be able to join me tonight BBC1 at 6.30pm for 
all the day’s news and of course Paul will be here with the detailed weather 
forecast. Also tonight, we’ll have an update on the developments of the Lincoln 
City story - we’re expecting a statement from them today, the WI are set to 
shock us all in East Yorkshire and our special guest tonight will be Dave 
Willetts. Dave has wowed audiences both on Broadway and in the West End playing 
the role of Phantom in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Phantom of the Opera. He 
will be with me on the programme, so I hope you can join me then. 

Thank you very much indeed for all the emails after yesterday’s letter on a 
variety of subjects. I’ll mention just a few of them. There’s one here from 
June Fitz Gibbon. I was talking about Christmas presents of course yesterday. 
“Five years ago, we agreed with our family and friends that we wouldn’t give 
birthday or Christmas presents, thus saving time, money and the embarrassment 
of giving or receiving unwanted presents. The freedom of stress is wonderful. 
There is too much commercialism now at Christmas. If we see something during 
the year we think someone would like, we buy it then, but without the pressure 
of having to do so.” June, thank you very much indeed for that one.

I mentioned in the letter yesterday about watching Gillian McKeith’s programme 
the other night on Channel 4 about the twelve foods she thinks we should avoid. 
Well, to be honest, once I’d knocked the twelve out, there wasn’t much left for 
me to eat! But I have been managing for three or four days now without eating 
any white bread, which is my New Year’s resolution and as you can probably 
tell, if you’ve heard me on the television, I sound like death warmed up at the 
moment and full of cold. So, so much for healthy eating! 

Anyway, this one comes from Nicola of Hedon and she says, “I watched the 
Gillian McKeith ‘Toxic Food Countdown’ and I have to say that ‘scientifically’ 
she talks an awful lot of sense, but I have to wonder why she often looks 
stressed and drawn compared with the larger than life individuals for whom she 
prepares her own brand of diet! I wonder what Gillian ate over the festive 
season!” There you are. Nicola, thank you very much indeed for that one.

And just another one here, this one comes from Tim. He says, “Can someone 
explain to me why they have to have extra Bank Holidays whenever Christmas Day, 
Boxing Day or New Years Day is on a Saturday or a Sunday? Surely it’d make 
sense for employees to be given additional day’s leave that they can use at a 
time of the year when the nights are lighter and the weather a lot better?” I 
think that’s opening a whole new can of worms, but Tim, thank you very much 
indeed for that one.

And finally, Sally Turner says, “Talking of unwanted Christmas presents, let 
this be a warning. Only a couple of years ago, I bought a set of books for a 
present for somebody. I thought they were very nice – autobiographies of some 
of the Eastenders’ cast. However, the following year, the person I bought them 
for had rewrapped them and gave them to my husband for a Christmas present. We 
were shocked, horrified and then found it very funny. The person had forgotten 
that we had given it to them. We never did say anything, but in future we 
bought the person things to eat. We never got those back!” Sally, thank you 
very much indeed. Any more stories, then please do get in touch.


Middle Classes

I don’t know if you see yourself as one of the middle classes, but I see that 
Jamie Oliver is the number one hero of the middle classes according to a style 
guide issued today. His crusade to improve school dinners has made him an idol 
of parents throughout Britain. The TV chef heads the top ten of influences on 
the middle classes published today. David Cameron is in second place and Chris 
Martin, the lead singer of Coldplay, comes third for his influential 
anti-poverty stance. So there you are. Something there for the middle classes! 
But once again, I think that’s something we don’t want to get into!


Torvill and Dean

I remember sitting up in the middle of the night waiting for them to skate. 
More than twenty-four million viewers watched along side me to see them skate 
to Olympic Gold twenty-two years ago. Now, Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean 
are returning to primetime TV after hitching their skates to the reality TV 
show bandwagon. The couple, whose performance of Ravel’s Bolero electrified the 
1984 Winter Olympics, are reuniting on the ice rink for the first time in eight 
years to star in an ITV1 series called Dancing On Ice. I’m great fans of Jayne 
Torvill and Christopher Dean and the interesting thing is that all these years 
later, there was a picture in the paper twenty-two years on and Christopher 
Dean doesn’t look any different at all!


Four Wheel Drive

This is also something else I don’t want to get into after the stick I got from 
Paul before Christmas, but I learn that children are no safer riding in bulky 
4x4 vehicles than in standard passenger cars, so say researchers. Everyone 
driving an ordinary car will be relieved to hear this. Safety advantages in 
their greater size and weight were found to be cancelled out by the fact that 
4x4s are twice as likely to roll over in an accident. The study, sponsored by a 
children’s hospital and an insurance company, dispels the belief that bigger 
equals better, so say safety experts. So if you don’t drive a four wheel drive 
vehicle, you’ll be pleased to hear that one.


Well, that’s it from me for today. Join me tonight on BBC1 at 6.30pm. Don’t 
forget if you want to drop me a line, then please do. I look forward to getting 
an email later today – [EMAIL PROTECTED] 

Have a good day, take care.

Peter


And for the latest news and more where you live, go to:
http://bbc.co.uk/humber and http://bbc.co.uk/lincolnshire

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