Beware of the Cornish Mutant Ninja Tortoises!/September 23rd 2011.

Richie - I must say we sat in the snug this afternoon agog - nay, entranced - by your most excellent column. Who would have thought that today, when Mahmood Abbas stood before the UN to make his impassioned and historical plea for Palestinian statehood, that Lord Richie Littlewon, Britain's Bestest Columnist, would produce such a literary masterwork! To symbolically equate the struggle of the PLO with a tortoise sanctuary in deepest Cornwall was nothing short of genius sir! The poor tortoises, penned in and deprived of their freedom, and subject to the intransigent whims of a jobsworth council official (obviously a coded swipe at Netanyahu) is a most telling metaphor - one that the venerable Swift would applaud! Old Arthur Groat was so overcome that his dentures fell out of his mouth and into his pint of mild. Lord Richie, your esteemed column has today greatly contributed to the cause of peace in the Middle East. Never will I look at a tortoise in the same way again I say! (Hic!)