Unwarranted comments

By what right did Tanja Cilia (The Sunday Times, May 30) devote three-fifths of her "television" column last Sunday to describe her personal problems regarding prizes won by her relatives in a non-TV competition carried in Il-Gens?

Besides, her comments on Crosscraft are totally misleading. The following are the facts, which can be backed with all necessary evidence and documentation.

1. In June and October 2002 two readers of Il-Gens won two separate prizes from Crosscraft. These two individuals received a letter from Il-Gens informing them that they had won and how to collect their prizes.

Nothing was heard from these winners until March this year (Tanja Cilia's "some time ago" is supposed to imply nearly two years later) when Mrs Cilia appeared at our office to collect these gifts. Obviously, nearly two years later, these gifts could not be delivered. Moreover Mrs Cilia wrote to tell us that these gifts will be sent to missionaries in Kenya.

May I inform Mrs Cilia and all those who have left gifts at Crosscraft that every year uncollected gifts are automatically sent by Crosscraft directly to people in need. This year such gifts have been sent to missions in Guatemala and Albania. Therefore Mrs Cilia's "tangential brainwaves" arrived when her gifts were already being used in Guatemala or Albania.

2. I agree fully with Mrs Cilia that our telephone conversation was "boring and repetitive". I had phoned her, since I thought she was a TV expert, to give me some suggestions and some constructive criticism on a game aired on TV about which she had commented negatively in the previous weeks. This game forms part of two separate programmes produced by Crosscraft on Net and Super 1 TV, in which people are asked to phone directly and guess the prices of products shown on screen.

During our telephone conversation Mrs Cilia was unable to give me a single suggestion, except making the game harder to win by the audience. Hence the feeling that the phone call was boring and repetitive is mutual. This was not expected from a person who is responsible for commenting on TV programmes for readers of The Sunday Times. I thought Mrs Cilia had some "brainwave" regarding this game following her negative comments in her column.

3. May I also point out that Mrs Cilia is also insulting TV viewers by commenting that "a general knowledge question... would drastically diminish the number of calls received". Is she implying that Maltese who are relaxing watching TV have no general knowledge at all?

Tanja Cilia has a number of apologies to make: (i) an apology to your readers who from her expect comments on TV programmes, rather than her personal problems; (ii) an apology to Net TV, Super 1, and Crosscraft for commenting negatively on a programme without offering constructive criticism; (iii) one to Crosscraft for commenting on an issue which arose due to her own negligence in collecting two gifts nearly two years after they were won; (iv) to your newspaper for abusing of your space for her personal grievances; (v) to viewers of this programme by indirectly implying they are unable to reply to general knowledge questions.