A series of jokes that work best out of order

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more

The last word (again)

Many thanks to those who wrote in response to our division of the world into magazine-forwards and (Feedback’s favoured) magazine-backwards readers (19/26 December 2020). Robin Shipp confesses to taking things even further, reading our individual items in reverse order, thereby sometimes missing the point of running jokes.

Robin, if you’re reading this week, nice to have you with us and it’s a pleasure to devote our sign-off item to you. Our apologies that none of the preceding items followed on from one another, but at least you have the consolation that we are all, column-forwards and column-backwards readers, now …