Dear Sinead O'Connor: Spiffing good show, old girl. A chap who knows a thing or two about making an exhibition of himself, welcomes the wild child of rock into the bosom of conformity

What a turn-up for the books. I'm not generally the sort of cove who becomes easily rattled by the behaviour of a song-thrush like yourself. After all, this pop music lark has always attracted beards, bolshevists and weird birds of every description.

It's only natural when you're young to want to massacre the bourgeoisie, sack Park Lane and disembowel the hereditary aristocracy.

But dash it, it was a bit rummy when you tore up that picture of the jolly old Pope.

When Aunt Agatha heard about it she shied up like a mustang, I can tell you. 'Bertie,' she said, 'it is young women like this who make a person with the future of the race at heart despair.' I declined to argue the toss with her on this. Like yourself, Aunt Agatha can be a pretty formidable prospect and I'd have put my chemise on her disapproving of you.

A few days later however, I returned to the good old Metrop and Jeeves drew my attention to your picture in one of the papers. Truth be told, on an earlier occasion when Jeeves caught me cutting a rug to one of your livelier tunes, he stopped the gramophone. When I enquired why, he merely stated: 'She is not sanguine, sir.'

Imagine my pleasure then that upon closer inspection I observed that the newspaper picture in question featured you running in the bally Mothers' Race at your child's school sports day.

Now, Jeeves is a fellow of the ripest intellect, and when I asked him what it all meant, he said: 'It is a decided improvement, sir, and if nothing else, I fancy it may at last be a faltering step towards a maturity more becoming of a young woman in public life.' Jeeves in his own inimitable way was, as usual, right on the button. Why, the last time I saw you, you were haranguing a vast crowd at some celebration shindig over the pond in America.

You had tears running down your map and looked generally like a haddock with lung trouble. The press statement you subsequently dished up was absolute tommy-rot and Jeeves and I had more or less written you off as a pronounced loony.

And yet here you are now, happily robust and running in the Mothers' Race like a thoroughbred at Goodwood. By jove. That's the stuff to give the troops, what? Especially so, in the light of the fact that another picture in one of the popular rags this week depicts the jolly old Duchess of York sitting a similar race out because of some trifling injury caused by her tumbling off her horse.

I can only say: 'Good show, madam.' The fact is that if this improvement in your behaviour continues, we may yet be able to whisk you over to Aunt Agatha's for croquet on the lawn.

Welcome to the musty old world of conformity, what ho] Jeeves and I would both like to convey our heartiest congratulations.

Toodle-pip,

Bertie Wooster

As interpreted by Martin Newell

(Photograph omitted)