Matthew Engel’s article on the cricketer Colin Milburn (Man behind the mask: Milburn takes centre stage, 22 October) reminds me of the time in the early 1970s when Middlesbrough Round Table booked him as an after-dinner speaker. He had not realised that it was a dinner-jacket affair and (though he could probably have managed without) I was sent out to scour the dress-hire shops in the surrounding towns and countryside to try to find a dinner suit to fit his gigantic frame. I was greeted with incredulity but managed to find a jacket that would do (so long as he did not try to button it), but the waist measurement proved impossible. In the end he managed to look reasonably presentable above the waist and we tried to arrange the table and his notes to avoid sight of his trousers. I recall his good humour both before and during the evening, which I now realise must have disguised any anguish he felt about the end of his first-class career.
Gordon Hetherington
Great Ayton, North Yorkshire
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