It’s the way he tells them

Sir, – Kevin O'Sullivan (Letters, September 4th) noticed an unused Christmas cracker sitting on the bookcase of DUP MP Jim Shannon. In these confusing times, perhaps the only truth Mr Shannon can cling to is to look upon it and say, in the immortal words of his fellow Ulsterman Frank Carson, "that's a cracker". – Yours, etc,

NEIL ARDIFF,

Dublin 13.