Pass notes’ look at marathon gigs (28 June) reported that the Grateful Dead “supposedly played for five hours at the Bickershaw festival in Wigan in 1973”. The recording of the music played that evening (and some stage banter) lasts just shy of four hours, but the band was on stage, except for a 20-minute break, for five hours. It was in May 1972 and it was utterly spellbinding. The audience in Rotterdam were treated to a 44-minute version of Dark Star four days later.
Chris Hardman
Manchester
• Reading John Crace’s sketch (After 13 years in power, who exactly do Tory MPs think ‘the establishment’ is?, 3 July), I was reminded of a favourite saying of my late father: “If you put all of their brains in a tin, you still wouldn’t have enough to make a rattle.”
Gordon Blunt
Market Harborough, Leicestershire
• I enjoyed Leila Latif’s wonderfully scathing review of The Idol (Sky Atlantic), which she described as “one of the worst shows ever made” (3 July). But I am baffled by her generosity in awarding it one star out of five. How dire does a show have to be to get nul points?
Mike Pender
Cardiff
• Steve Barclay, who blamed an ageing population, among other things, for the state of the NHS in an interview with Sky News, should remember that it is the work of this ageing population that paid off the debt left by the second world war.
Jane Teverson
Belchamp Walter, Essex
• It wasn’t the Blair government that introduced PFI to the NHS (Letters, 4 July). The Major government introduced it in 1992.
Daniel O’Leary
Sawston, Cambridgeshire
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