• IT grieves me having to write this as I’m a great fan of the CNJ. John Gulliver incorrectly reported that “while working for the BBC “ I first saw the terrible poverty in the North-east, (Why gangster man is still simmering, February 28).

The truth is very different as I made abundantly clear in my talk at the Owl bookshop. This revelation occurred when I was just 22, doing my National Service, and serving on the lower deck of a Royal Navy fishery protection vessel.

Over two years, 1954/6, I docked in most of the UK’s fishing ports and it was then that I witnessed the shocking poverty and deprivation in those hell holes.

In fact I never worked for BBC News and it was Granada’s World in Action that took me to the US in 1964, to Dallas, a year after Kennedy’s assassination.

Here I filmed the Republican Convention where the delegates, ignorant of ITV’s very existence, assumed I was from the BBC and was therefore undoubtedly a “commie”.

This complaint is trivial but it does highlight the imperative role of the reporter on which I needn’t elaborate. I look forward to enjoying many more editions of your terrific newspaper.

MIKE HODGES