I WAS surprised to read in last week’s Cotswold Journal, sandwiched between news of the increase in the use of food banks and a campaign to save a children’s centre due to council cuts, a puff piece, worthy of Hello or OK, the “news” that a retired footballer and his ex-crooner wife are thinking of moving to the Cotswolds.

May I just say that my personal view is that the majority of you readers could not care if any more “celebs” decide to bless us with their presence in our once vibrant but now dormitory communities.

The idea that all these “celebs” grace our pubs, shops, schools or libraries with their trade or presence is utterly misled, when was Ms Murdoch seen in a pub in Stow?

What do they really contribute to our everyday lives? As for Tom Hayman Joyce saying, on my behalf, that I would welcome the Beckhams to the area he is far off the mark, unless he is thinking of organising a group of “locals” to arrange a housewarming, in which case I may go along with a bottle of the local beer, but I would not stay long!

MARC BUFFERY Stow-on-the-Wold