8 APRIL 1978, Page 18

Failure

Sir: Richard Ingrams must have fallen asleep while he watched the Boat Race. Or else he has started to sacrifice truth to rhetorical effect. Or, more likely still, he is playing an April Fool's day joke on us (Spectator, 1 April).

John Fail was the Oxford, not the Cambridge, cox. And it was the Oxford, not the Cambridge, boat which made the false start. Nigel Saul

Hertford College, Oxford