A Reader Writes #496

The following letter has been received by night staff at the editorial offices of professorthrupiece.com and is published here in a spirit of openness. The owners and publishers of professorthrupiece.com assume no responsibility for its contents or the sanity of its author.

"Leafing through an old copy of The Dorset Radio Times the other day (being an ardent periodicumologist I have a substantial collection held under the unwavering protection of Stanley my deceased and now taxidermised black labrador retriever), I chanced upon a photograph of Professor Brian Thrupiece which I have now superimposed on the photograph of George Dixon and his colleagues recently published in your esteemed organ.

Mr Outta-Getcha's comparative photograph shows Professor Thrupiece [above] and Bartrum Baxter as Constable Threadbeat [below]. The resemblance is, according to Mr Outta-Getcha both obvious and startling. Readers will make up their own mind. Both the RSCBE and The Royal Dorset Psychiatric Institute have declined to comment thus far.

I believe that seeing the Professor in context in this way increases the likelihood of people recognising what I recognised at once: ie that the actor playing Constable Threadbeat (the ever reliable Bartrum Baxter I believe) is in fact none other than Professor Thrupiece in disguise. Could it be that Bartrum Baxter was in fact the nom de theâtre [ou nom de télévision] of the much loved and "missing presumed disappeared" culinary bio-ethics professor?

Were I a paranoid conspiracy theorist (I am not because I am convinced that if you are, people are out to get you) I might opine that your published photograph is part of the evidence being considered by Commissare Arsène Bèrglare and his team and that you are suppressing this information for your own devious purposes.

Yours in organised secrecy

Theyer Outta-Getcha