Sir, - Might I recommend for the Nobel Prize a poet more farcically preposterous than Dylan? (John Boland, Weekend, October 4th). Why not go posthumous, I say, and honour William (the Great) McGonigal? He possessed all of the attributes of the modern pop lyricists: a tin ear unalterably tuned to the nearest stock phrase or cliche; and a tendency, be times, to philosophise - resulting in verbal floundering, pretentiousness, and those foggy profundities that keep scholars of the genre beavering for a generation.
What distinguishes McGonigal was that incomparable talent of his - one for which he sought no plaudits - the talent to make us laugh so much. I cannot recall when I last laughed with a pop singer.
I own up that I once believed that the answer was blowin' in the wind. Then I grew up a little and realised that there weren't no answer blowin' in no wind; wasn't no wind, even just a blast of hot air. It seems we are in for a bout of what Sean O'Casey called "the glorification of insignificance".
Yours, etc.,
Purcell Park,
Shannon, Co Clare.