Don't over-design this little package! Don't spend hours working on your letterhead and picking special papers for your envelopes and letters.

They were typed and handwritten; sophisticated and simple; written on letterhead from captains of industry and on lined paper from schoolchildren.

For a plain person to be paid the same as a very attractive one, they would have to be 40 per cent brighter, the journal Economics Letters reports.

There was usually a lot of junk mail and a few big envelopes for her mother, a pile to dump on the kitchen table before she went up to her room to start her homework.

But I kid! Your letter has to be one of the loveliest that I' ve received in my short time writing this column.