LETTER: Sound advice

From Ms Margaret Pryor

Sir: Your TV correspondent is so right about the Tour de France (12 July). We watch it, for the glimpses of beautiful France; poplar-lined highways, snow-capped Savoy Alps, little villages and cafes, tables with checked tablecloths, and of course old men drinking pastis in the evening. Yes, the cyclists do get in the way.

And Channel 4 is obviously worried about the ratings. For it too has now attached "music" to those worrying moments when the commentator has to draw breath. The beat, which sounds like a washing-up brush hitting the kitchen sink, now erupts during skiing programmes, Wimbledon replays, the round-the-world yacht race - at those moments when the director is faced with the awful dilemma of showing the thing itself. Doesn't he know that the sounds of ski on snow, yacht racing through water, tennis ball against racquet, are among the most beautiful and evocative?

Yours sincerely,

Margaret Pryor.

London, N7