Thank you all for writing this column for me

The way a journalist does his research is this. He first prints a questionable statement in a newspaper. Then readers who are more knowledgeable than he is send in letters and e-mails to correct him. Modestly he admits their superior knowledge, learns from what they say, and finally prints their corrections in his column and gets paid for doing so.

That is what I intend to do today. You may think that all I am doing is paying tribute to the sagacity of my readers. In fact, I am allowing them to write the column for me. Thank you, everyone.

First of all, Mrs Elliott of Upminster upbraids me for thinking that there was such a thing in America as "Loony Tunes". There isn't and wasn't. It was "Loony Toons", where "toon" is short for "cartoon". Oops.

Secondly, a letter from Dr Cowan of Newcastle upon Tyne, about Sars. I recently invented a young doctor who said that "acute" and "severe" meant the same thing.

"Sorry," says Dr Cowan. "'Severe' in medical practice is not synonymous with 'acute' and no young doctor would think so. 'Mild' and 'severe' are a measure of the severity of an illness, whereas 'acute' and 'chronic' refer to its duration. Thus a broken leg is acute, psoriasis is chronic, a common cold is a mild acute disease, whereas Sars is severe and acute. Osteoarthritis is a disease that is chronic, and some diseases such as depression are often characterised by acute exacerbations of a chronic condition. Got it?"

Yep. Got it. "Acute" means "short-lived". Thanks, doc. Won't make that mistake again. And straight on to a letter from Mr Chesher of Leigh-on-Sea, who appreciated the bookseller I quoted as saying that when he said a book was in "good" condition, this meant "not very good".

"Further to that," (Chesher speaking), "have you noticed the more recent slippage of the word 'large' into 'medium'?

"I buy my underpants at a well-known high street retailer who used to display them in three sizes, 'small', 'medium' and 'large'. Some years ago the number of sizes was extended by one, named 'X-large'. This week I noticed that a fifth size has been added, called 'XX-large'. This means that the median, the 3rd out of 5, called 'large', in fact now means 'medium'!"

Excellent. But I also received a rap over the knuckles from a mathematical reader who says I have confused 'average' with 'median', by using 'average' instead of 'median' in a sentence similar to the previous one. I had been talking about the star ratings used by the Radio Times. I might, however, have mentioned the one used by The Independent, where a "mediocre" film is given two stars out of five. "Mediocre" is from the same root as medium, median and so on. It means "middle". And it's two stars out of five!?!

Finally, a little flurry of letters about The Pink And Lily, a Chiltern pub with strange connections to Rupert Brooke. Not so strange, says Jacob Tompkins. He was a regular and even wrote a poem about the place:

Ah Pink ah pub of my desire

Ah Lily for my meandering feet!

I am the ash that once was fire.

I would forget that youth was fleet.

I wander on till I can greet,

At the way's end so dark and hilly,

Firelight and rest, a snack to eat,

And bitter at the Pink and Lily.

Mrs Haisman of Whitby has a better contribution. She says that once when Brooke visited the pub with Jacques Raverat, Rupert wrote:

"Never came there to the Pink

Two such men as we, I think."

Whereupon Raverat added:

"Never came there to the Lily

Two men quite so richly silly."

Brooke resumed:

"So broad, so supple and so tall,

So modest and so brave withal..."

But I think Raverat had already written the two best lines.

Finally, I had a note from someone on the back of an envelope. "Brooke died of blood poisoning, not malaria, surely?" I think it was blood poisoning, now that I come to think. I checked with the website of the Pink And Lily, but it has decided to gloss over Brooke's unglamorous end. This is what it says: "Brooke died in combat in 1915 following a disastrous naval expedition".

There's poetic spin for you!