Letter from Vernon Coleman to Linda Fenelon of the Advertising Standards Authority

29.5.01

Dear Linda

Thank you for your letter responding to a complaint from the RDS (I assume this is the Research Defence Society). (Incidentally, you forgot to include copies of the Code Clause and the advertisement to which you referred.) I am surprised that you are so impatient that you felt the need to write again because you had not received a reply to a letter after just 7 days. I do try to deal with the important correspondence first.

The phrase 'postage packing and handling' refers to postage packing and handling. The word 'free' refers to the fact that there was no charge for the book. (Cf your dictionary definition of these words.) In addition to the cost of the postage the PP&H fee covers: cost of packing materials, cost of staff to open envelopes, cost of staff to input requests, cost of label, cost of staff to reply and label, bank charges, printing costs for label and other postage, packing and handling costs. Look around and you will see that this sort of offer appears almost daily in various newspapers and magazines around the country. I myself have run it several hundred times without complaint.

I have to tell you that I am not in the slightest bit interested in the views of the ASA on anything. The ASA, as you know, is a voluntary body with absolutely no power or authority. You may remember that it was the ASA which decreed that advertisements for my book Food for Thought could not appear because they pointed out (entirely accurately) that there is a link between certain types of food and cancer. (I was, on that occasion, in the unusual situation of knowing that both the British and American governments had published similar opinions.) I hate to think how many people might have died unnecessarily if the world had taken notice of the ASA and had decided that there was no link between food and cancer.
I really cannot imagine the Director General of Fair Trading being in the slightest bit interested in the fact that I used the word 'free' entirely appropriately. And if the media stopped using the word 'free' in advertisements and promotions there wouldn't be much media left.

Finally, if you write to me again I will make a formal complaint to the police. I regard your letters as harassment and I believe that new legislation should protect me from this sort of nonsense. I do not contribute to ASBOF and do not recognise the ASA. I am quite serious about this. It will make an interesting test case. I look forward to not hearing from you.

Yours sincerely

Professor Vernon Coleman MB ChB DSc

P.S. I am writing this letter solely so that I will have a reply to put on my website alongside your letters and the two advertisements to which you have referred. I do not wish to appear immodest but I rather suspect that my website receives more visitors than yours and I think this issue is worthy of public attention.