Sir, - Fine Gael may have to be careful with its "Celtic Snail" poster campaign. Fifty years ago, my father Toby O'Brien, as the Tory party's PR man, was suddenly castigated from an unexpected quarter (the story is told in my book Fringe Benefits). The British Snail-Watching Society wrote objecting to a candidate describing the Labour government's housing policy as "snail's progress". The secretary of the society wrote: "The remark was obviously intended to be derogatory to the housing programme, but it was also both derogatory and unfair to the snail. The snail may move slowly, but its unhurried and undeviating persistence brings it efficiently and on time to any destination which it sets.
"The aim of this society is to promote interest in and appreciation of the snail. I am therefore directed by my Executive Committee to request that you discourage Conservative speakers from employing a metaphor which prejudices the reputation of the snail."
My father responded to this almost unbelievable letter with style tinged with Irish wit: "I fully appreciate the feeling of any gasteropodophile when he reads derogatory remarks made by politicians about the object of his affections. I will certainly draw attention to the obvious unfairness of comparing the progress of a lowly creature which has so admirably solved the housing problem to that of another lowly creature which has still so far to go." - Yours, etc.,
Donough O'Brien, London SW15.