Dear Wrigley's

OK, so your sugar-free gum is Britons' favourite sweet, but don't think we swallow the tale that it is healthy and sophisticated

Apparently, your Wrigley's Extra sugar-free gum is now the nation's favourite sweet, while another of your gums, Orbit sugar-free, is the fourth best-selling brand. This is being touted by Trebor Bassett, the confectionery company that carried out the research, as evidence that British consumers are becoming more "health-conscious". Apparently, we are turning away from traditional tooth- rot confection such as Opal Fruits and Fruit Pastilles in favour of a more sophisticated form of oral gratification.

Of course, this is complete nonsense. Gum is tacky. Gum is for suckers. Your cheesy television commercials try to convince us that Wrigley's is part of the great American heritage, like Coke and Levi's, but that simply isn't so.

Gum is favoured by speed freaks, coke heads, Chippendales and monosyllabic football managers. In fact, if you did a bit more research you'd probably find that a substantial percentage of your output is being purchased by the Man United manager, Alex Ferguson, who seems contractually obliged to chew whenever he appears on television, especially when giving one of his doleful interviews.

And just how healthy can it be to chew without eating? Maybe chewing sugar-free gum helps to delay tooth decay, but how good for you can it be to trick your stomach into believing that you're eating?

Still, each to his own Nutra-Sweet, that's what I say. What really irks me is the filth that results from consumption of your products. Take a bus ride down Oxford Street, or any other busy tourist thoroughfare, and you'll see what I mean. From the top deck you'll observe that the pavements are mottled with black spots. This is what happens to spent gum. It gets spat on to the pavement, where it lies flattened, collecting bacteria, until the sun comes out. Then it gets soft again and sticks to the shoes of pedestrians, who unwittingly walk it all the way home and discover it on their carpets - or if they are less fortunate, as I was last summer, on their clothes.

Since you obviously make such a handsome profit, surely you could set aside funds to help remove the disgusting detritus left behind by your slack-jawed customers. Maybe you could buy each inner-city authority one of those very expensive pressurised steam-cleaners, which seem necessary for removing gum from our pavements. I'm damned if I see why my taxes should pay to clean up the mess.

The Singaporean government must have felt the same way when they decided a couple of years ago to ban chewing gum altogether. And they really mean it. In their determination to prevent your crappy gunk getting all over their streets they are quite willing to deport anybody caught trying to smuggle the stuff in. I reckon you should clean up your act, or we should follow their example.

OK, so you're Number One. Congratulations. Now stop masticating and do something useful.

ALIX SHARKEY