SIR - My spirits were lifted upon reading your grand article "Gareth Gates sets up stammer school". I wish that I had the opportunity to have a speech therapy like the McGuire Programme during my youth in Ireland. After many failed attempts at speech therapy, I finally found one at a big university here in the US that has served me well.

Also, in my youth in the 1960s and 1970s I do not recall any celebrity who was identified as a stammerer and who could act as a role model. Gareth Gates is on the list of "Famous People Who Stutter" on the website of the nonprofit charity The Stuttering Foundation (stammeringhelp.org).

I applaud Gareth Gates for putting a human face on this speech problem.

Mary Burke, Bremen Street, Boston, Massachusetts, America