Letter: Bad for bikes

IN HIS article ('When cars are the stars', Review, 20 December), James Rampton bemoans cinematic inaccuracies regarding cars, such as the sound of the engine not matching the vehicle shown.

That is mild compared with the indignities to which cycling enthusiasts are subjected. In Breaking Away, an expensive road bike twice changes before our eyes into a more disposable bike. On each occasion, this presages (and therefore removes all surprise from) an impending crash.

Chess players too are treated in a cavalier attitude by advertisers. In the Dunhill advertisement a few pages before James Rampton's piece, the soi-disant 'man of letters' may know his alphabet soup but he is at the Janet and John level when it comes to chess.

Any beginner could have told him that there should be a black square to each player's left. Still, what else are we to expect from the tobacco industry?

David Le Fevre

Enfield, Middlesex