This is not a new idea (Tongue-twisters could be used to gauge alcohol-intoxication levels, study finds, 9 November). When I was “nobbut a lass”, in 1957, I heard an Al Read sketch on the radio in which the police said to a drunk: “Can you say Aberystwyth?” To which he replied: “No, but I can say Rhyl three times.”
Kaye McGann
Standlake, Oxfordshire
• It is likely that Harold Wilson would have approved of tongue-twister tests for intoxication. He only took another glass if he could faultlessly say: “I am president of the Royal Statistical Society.”
Richard Rawles
Honorary research fellow in experimental psychology, UCL
