Peter Rhodes: Favourite reader contributions from 2018

A READER reports buying one item for £5 and another for £4. The shop assistant used a calculator to add them up.

"MY name is Laurence but everybody calls me Lol. In this internet age it is extremely difficult for me to send a sympathy card. Sorry to hear about your sad loss. Lol."

A READER points out that, if you give the charity Water Aid £2 a month it can supply water to a family in scorching-dry Africa. So why does Severn-Trent demand £38 a month from him to do much the same in a country where, as he puts it,"it pees down with rain two days out of five on average?"

"WATCHING some TV commercials these days, it's not just that I don't understand the advert. Sometimes I'm not even sure what the product is. Tell me I'm not the only one."

A READER admits he never thought he'd see the day when the words "KFC chicken shortage" and "crisis" would appear in the same sentence.

"JUDGING by some of the names on the Honours List, I reckon my old school prefect's badge must be worth at least the equivalent of a CBE."

AS the campaign for a "People's Vote" rattles on, based on the claim that the British public did not understand what Brexit would mean, a reader writes: "I am watching this with interest. I am not 100 per cent sure everything was explained fully at my wedding ceremony 46 years ago."

A READER said he read one news item twice and he's still not sure if it's a joke. It concerns the Central England Co-op which is using its 5p customer levy on plastic bags to buy life-saving defibrillators. These will be installed at Co-op shops - and funeral homes.

I AM taken to task for suggesting that in Black Country dialect, Barclays Bank might be pronounced "bonk." A reader insists that while "bonk" would be used to describe a hill or steep rise, a high-street bank is "bank." To make things entirely clear, he adds that "bankers " is pronounced as " them robbdoggin' piggantin' wammels." I am much obliged.

A READER emailed this week to point our that coastal erosion largely affects Yorkshire so "the quicker the better."

EARLIER this week I used an image of my lunch, rearranged into a smiley face. A reader says he took one glance at this assemblage of mushrooms, tomatoes and roast potatoes and reckoned it looked like upside-down male genitalia. Please, see a doctor as quickly as possible.

A READER draws my attention to "energy shots," which come in tiny 60ml bottles at health shops and promise to "boost your focus." He says the price works out at £31 per litre - more than a bottle of malt whisky.