At 6.45am last Thursday I was waiting to use the toilet in a café, when I was approached by a visitor in some distress.

Although in urgent need of a toilet she could not bear to enter the midden which is the overnight toilet in Gloucester Green. I allowed her to precede me into the café toilet.

While waiting, I tried to think of any other public toilets that are open in Oxford before 9am, and failed.

I suppose she could have asked to use a toilet on one of the London-bound buses if the drivers would have permitted it, but there is nothing else.

Oxford contains a large number of people: visitors, students and natives. Each one of them needs to use a toilet several times in every 24 hours.

If clean, accessible toilet facilities are not provided round the clock, it will be extremely detrimental to the city’s tourist trade and could well put an extra load on the health services.

Doubtless council chiefs will claim that either there are already sufficient toilets in Oxford, or there is no funding for further or better provision.

If they really believe this, though, perhaps they should publicise their home addresses so that we can all use their bathrooms in an emergency.

ANGELA FERGUSON Banbury Road Oxford