What’s the best bedtime beverage? Your answers

Hot chocolate at day’s end. Photograph: Felicity Cloake for the Guardian

Is there anything better than chamomile tea at bedtime?

Most drinks are better than chamomile tea, at any time of day.
Avril Taylor, Dundas, Ontario, Canada

• A mug of hot chocolate to sip while you caress the silken fur of the Burmese cat on your lap. Or enjoying a glass of port while snuggled up to your best beloved.
Ursula Nixon, Bodalla, NSW, Australia

• Yes. The first cup of tea of the day, just as dawn is breaking.
Clive Wilkinson, Rothbury, UK

• Definitely: try a strong G&T.
Pat Phillips, Adelaide, South Australia

• My homemade hot chocolate, a hot toddy (for a cold), some languid lovemaking – to name but a few.
Stuart Williams, Lilongwe, Malawi

• Not having chamomile tea at bedtime.
Art Campbell, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

• The convenience of an indoor toilet.
Lawrie Bradly, Surrey Hills, Victoria, Australia

• Slops: a smattering of nutmeg on pieces of bread floating in hot milk.
Philip Stigger, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

• Sleep.
Craig Sergeant, Nashville, Tennessee, US

That’s an insult to muppets

These days, name-calling is rife. What’s the most accurate epithet going? The funniest?

Ex-Australian prime minister Paul Keating is the modern master of the political put-down. When told his opponent Andrew Peacock, who had bouffant hair, was re-appointed leader of the opposition, Keating shot back: “Can a souffle rise twice?” He referred to an economic rationalist opponent, John Hewson, as a “feral abacus” and on another occasion as “a shiver waiting for a spine”.
David Isaacs, Sydney, Australia

• The epic burn relating Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull to a failed firework by former PM Paul Keating: “You light him up, there’s a bit of a fizz, but then nothing … nothing.”
James Beckford Saunders, Brunswick, Victoria, Australia

• Oliver Burkeman’s recent reference to Mr President – “that Coke-slurping quasi-fascist muppet” (22 December) – has my vote.
Graham Kirby, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia

• For his most prominent facial feature, my father was fondly known in our family as The Aardvark. This was also the funniest, until I heard an event described as being “as popular as toenail fungus”.
Anthony Walter, Surrey, British Columbia, Canada

Those lyrics give it away

Singers sing, performers perform. Does personal life ever affect them?

If Taylor Swift’s lyrics are anything to go by, yes.
Tim Grey, Melbourne, Australia

• I doubt they have any, judging by how the young Michael Jackson was milked as a cash-cow and rehearsed incessantly by his father.
RM Fransson, Wheat Ridge, Colorado, US

• If they are human.
Charlie Bamforth, Davis, California, US

• Yes, it does. The tragic endings of some being proof.
R De Braganza, Kilifi, Kenya

• Ask their mothers.
Richard Orlando, Westmount, Quebec, Canada