THE excellent and fascinating feature on Percy Toplis (January 15), the so-called Monocled Mutineer, serves as a reminder of the shabby role of the BBC in 1986 when it commissioned and broadcast its drama of the same name.

Programme makers were at the centre of a 're-writing history' scandal when the drama, with its Marxist message, went on air. This 'enthralling true-life story', as the BBC's lying propaganda put it, turned out to be nothing more than a piece of class war fiction, with murder and sexual outrages, which never took place and a working class hero who was not working class at all and who was, in any case, nowhere near the site of a mutiny, which itself had no basis in historical fact.

The front man behind the controversy was the late Bill Cotton, son of Billy Cotton of 'Wakey Wakey' memory, who was Managing Director of BBC Television. Cotton notoriously tried to justify the programme by claiming it represented 'the greater truth'.

Can lessons still be learned today from this political firestorm? Yes, in particular that viewers should not be confused by the interviewing of fact and fiction and the placing of real life characters in the midst of fictional events. Where this is not practicable, it should be made absolutely clear that what is being shown does not purport to be the truth.

COLIN SMITH, Totton Branch, New Forest East Conservatives.