JUST a thought while going through today’s TV page in the Oxford Mail (January 24), 9pm, and the BBC1 description of Silent Witness.

As the 9 o’clock television watershed is designed to protect the young, the vulnerable and the timid from watching or seeing scenes of violence, etc, how is it that newspapers all seem to ‘report’, as part of their TV listings, the actual plot lines to dramas containing acts of violence and murder?

Seems a bit daft to safeguard these groups on the one hand by showing this material after 9pm, and then go on to inadvertently expose them to written descriptions of all sorts of undesirable or very violent stuff within the TV page?

These pages are freely available to everyone who can read. For me, at 53, I’m not bothered for myself, but perhaps for someone to read the details of an horrific murder, that may have affected their family in real life, being similarly described as being part of fictional ‘entertainment’ drama might be one step too much.

I fully understand the difference between fact and fiction, but unfortunately there are some who can’t or don’t, or are not as yet old enough to mentally separate the two from each other.

We all know Poirot always comes good in the last five minutes, Colombo is un-foolable and Morse/Lewis are great for the scenery, if not the music!

But maybe the really grizzly stuff is best left for the voluntary viewer, rather than the innocent reader. Like I said, just a thought.

DAVID WILLIAMS David Walter Close Oxford