Madam, - I enjoyed reading your obituary of jazz singer George Melly, but was surprised it didn't mention that when Good-Time George, as he referred to himself in one of his songs, lost his libido shortly before his death, he said it was like "being unshackled from a lunatic".
We live in an era when sex is used to sell everything from apartments to cornflakes, when we are bombarded with sexual images in the media, on billboards and even on the backs of buses; when, in short, every conceivable means is used to arouse the lunatic within every man.
Plato compared man to a chariot being driven by a charioteer and pulled by two horses. The charioteer symbolises reason. One horse symbolises courage while the other symbolises the baser appetites. It is constantly trying to drag the chariot off its course. Modern marketing techniques appear to be directed almost exclusively at this wayward horse within so-called homo sapiens. It's no wonder Islamic fundamentalists regard Western society as decadent and corrupt. - Yours, etc,
JOE PATTON, Chapelizod Court, Dublin 20.