Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.

Why did the Apostrophe Protection Society not have a militant wing? Could I start one? Where do you get balaclavas?

After university, I got a job sub-editing and for years I was a literary editor.

Writers and painters alike are in the business of consulting their own imaginations, and stimulating the imaginations of others. Together, and separately, they celebrate the absolute mystery of otherness.

The way people behave towards each other is a measure of their value as human beings.

To those who care about punctuation, a sentence such as "Thank God its Friday" (without the apostrophe) rouses feelings not only of despair but of violence. The confusion of the possessive "its" (no apostrophe) with the contractive "it's" (with apostrophe) is an unequivocal signal of illiteracy and sets off a Pavlovian "kill" response in the average stickler.

If you still persist in writing, "Good food at it's best", you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave.