FRIDAY

MAYBE it is just bad timing that your correspondent D Holden asked how being multicultural benefits this country (Letters, April 7), the night your sports page carried a report of how Nigerian footballing genius Jay-Jay Okocha scored the goal that may have secured Wanderers' place in the Premiership for another year.

But if that doesn't answer it for him, you only have to look at the fascinating and diverse ways you can eat out these days (Greek, Balti, French, Italian, Japanese, Chinese) for anybody whose gastronomic imagination stretches beyond tripe and fish and chips.

Add on to that, the enormous variety of dress styles and colours -- we are not all pin-striped, cloth-capped, mediocrities any more. Fill in with all of the variety of ethnic minorities who are willing to run corner shops open until all hours, and take all of the jobs in transport and the health service that native Brits won't do, and without whom these vital services would long since have collapsed.

But, really, it's none of that, even. It's just that, unless you want the sort of universe in which everybody else is just like you, diversity is more fun. Tell your correspondent that foreigners are just as human as he is. Put your bank statement away, and join the human race!

Peter Johnston

Kendal Road

Bolton