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This week Daniel Kretinsky, the Czech billionaire who bought the Royal Mail’s parent group in 2024, told the House of Commons business and trade select committee that he was “deeply sorry” for the present state of the service and that “we are sorry for every letter that has arrived late”.
I have decided to write my own letter to Mr Kretinsky, which will, I know, arrive God knows when. We could all email instead, I suppose, but what if you are one of those people who just likes to lick things? How is that meant to work? Here’s the letter:
“We appreciate your apology and sincerely regret the inconvenience of having to appear before the Commons committee. You’re a busy man and we are aware that taking time out of your schedule to defend paying up front for the service you don’t provide must be a pain. As the head of the Odeon cinema chain would have told us if we’d asked: ‘We wish we’d thought of that. If you prepay for a cinema seat, we do, as a rule, feel we must show the film, which is just such a bore.’
“Mr Kretinsky, even though your business model is a thing of beauty, I do hope you will accept some honest feedback. I have had to cancel a listings magazine because said listings magazine would arrive after the listings were relevant. Another magazine to which I subscribe isn’t so time-sensitive but I receive it way after it’s in the shops. I sometimes finger it lovingly in the shop, eagerly anticipating the day I will get to call it my own, which may be tomorrow, next week, the week after or never. You certainly like to keep us on our toes! And you can, it’s true, cheer us up. I am always immensely cheered by the receipt of a Christmas card in February from the person I’d had to assume now hated me. You can make my day on those days. Full marks!
“I would like to be constructive. Although you’ve already succeeded in reducing second-class post to every other weekday and not on Saturdays, which may be most people’s wish for the first-class service — every other day? Amazing! — how about further reducing deliveries to a single annual National Mail Day? To put us out of our agony? People awaiting biopsy results won’t mind. It could be like a bank holiday, where we all take the day off to find out if we have the cancer that might once have been curable. What do you think?
“Meanwhile, I once read a study that so long as people had a postie who was nice — the type who would notice if an old person wasn’t coming to the door, for example — they would feel positively about the service whatever, and you know what? I do have warm feelings for our ever-changing postie. Sometimes I get all the street’s post in the one bundle, then have to distribute it myself. This is great, because I always have time on my hands. And I get to keep the rubber bands. At the moment several items in my freezer — opened bags of berries, for instance — are not spilling their contents thanks to Royal Mail. In fact, whenever I pull out the freezer drawer to find that no random blueberry has made a bid for freedom, I always think, why don’t more people give the Royal Mail five stars?
“True, this month, a man in Royal Mail uniform was filmed urinating in the corridor of a block of flats, which isn’t the loveliest of services to prepay for, but, Mr Kretinsky, you can move on from this. Can we have your assurance, perhaps, that this will happen every other day (bar Saturdays), then, when it doesn’t, people will actually rejoice? ‘I was expecting to step over piss today — but nothing!’ Otherwise, people may be put in mind of that Spitting Image sketch featuring Temporary Postman Pratt, who tips post down sewers, opens the box and puts the letters back in, and after a busy day is exhausted because ‘humping those heavy sacks of mail on top of his wardrobe can be very tiring’.
“I hope this finds you well, Mr Kretinsky, and it goes without saying, we’ll be sorry to have missed you, even when you’re in.”
The day I met Bob Monkhouse
The Repair Shop has rejected restoring Bob Monkhouse’s notebook of jokes on the grounds that there are “sexist” gags in there. I think we all hope the nice teddy bear ladies had nothing to do with that decision.
I interviewed him once. In the flesh he wasn’t at all oily. Instead he was delightful, thoughtful and fascinating, particularly when it came to his background. He was born into the family custard business, Monk and Glass, and “I was brought up in the atmosphere of ‘someday, son, all this custard could be yours’”.
His decision to go into comedy instead was not well received, nor was his first, early marriage. In fact, his mother, Dorothy, stopped speaking to him and would not have his name said in the house. His father, he continued, may have seen him perform a couple of times “without telling her. I thought I once saw him in the queue, called out, and he vanished.” When he heard his father was on his deathbed he went to visit, but Dorothy turned him away. He, in turn, pretended to most that she had died.
He said good comedy always comes from “pain”, adding: “I exorcise my own pain by making a joke of it, which is why I do a lot of jokes about parental cruelty.” He gave one example: “My mother tried to kill me as a child but she never admitted it. She said she thought the plastic bag would keep me fresh.” Ouch. But also: restore the notebook, for heaven’s sake. Show some respect.
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