Dear Sir Richard Greenbury

Marks & Spencer means reliable retailing, so its chairman's high- profile bungling, plus other recent misdemeanours, have done its reputation no good at all

You may think that as chairman of Marks & Spencer you are simply in charge of a business. You are not. Let me spell it out to you: for me and millions of other shoppers, you are in charge of a model of social organisation, the high-street incarnation of our values and aspirations.

We expect you to stand for quality and reliability. The trousers and summer slacks, the work shirts and pullovers you sell may never make a head turn in admiration, but they are the hardest-wearing, most solid garments available, short of going to a camping shop. Being forced by their mothers to wear M&S clothes is the nearest thing adolescent young men have to the discipline of national service.

The M&S name is also synonymous with service, organisation and trustworthiness. There is only one thing I enjoy more than buying something at your store: it is taking it back to be received by one of your willing and polite sales assistants.

When all else was collapsing around us - the monarchy falling into disrepute, politicians losing all our respect, the church beset by scandal - we could rely on M&S to uphold the embattled values of middle-class family life. No more, it seems.

First, a designer of women's swimwear accuses you of pinching her designs and parades her scantily clad models in front of your annual general meeting. I note your robust defence of the company's designers and their ability to come up with smart outfits. But what are you doing employing high-class designers anyway? If we want flashy designs, we would go to Austin Reed and Fenwick. Then there is the question of your support for family life. You yourself have disclosed that you work 80 to 90 hours a week and, as a result, you are separating from your wife. No wonder your marriage is under strain if you are never at home. M&S sells an image of stability and dependability. Your implication is that customers acquire these qualities by shopping with you. That image is not easily upheld if you reveal yourself to be an obsessive workaholic.

The revelation that John Major's son, a junior employee, is having an affair with one of your married store managers has not helped. When we come into one of your stores, we do not expect your staff to be having flings in the stock room. We imagine that they are on self-improving training schemes.

Then finally, to cap it all, you have made your ill-judged, ill-considered and hopefully never-to-be-repeated foray into public life. You spent months deliberating over executive pay, only to make recommendations on the taxation of share options which you then decided to disown. What were you doing all that time which led you to make a mistake of such large proportions?

You are appearing at the Treasury again today for a good grilling. Tell the Chancellor of the Exchequer you are going back to minding the shop and there will be a sigh of relief all round.

NORA MOWBRAY