While not wanting to demean in any way Mr Sherrat's fantastic work for the 800th Charter celebrations in Marlborough it came as a great surprise to discover that he had also organised and run the carnival (letters May 12).

I am sure that if we and the rest of the carnival committee had known this fact we would not have spent a whole year organising and running events to pay for the procession itself, let alone organise the whole thing on carnival day itself. Everyone was extremely tired after being on the go from 6.30am right through to 9pm only to find we had been let down badly by the town (very few people entered floats and only a limited number came to watch) but we still managed to give a lot of money to local charities and good causes.

Once again I can only thank last year's committee for their hard work and hope that this year's committee gets the support from Marlborough it so rightly deserves. Remember it only gets £300 from the council and it then has to find at least £10,000 to fund a carnival procession.

Please Marlborough, help or enter into the carnival spirit or that too will vanish from the ever decreasing list of things that happen around here.

R Dickens

2004 carnival chairman