SIR — My eye was caught by your paragraph in This Was The News that 25 years ago on October 11 1985, a public appeal was launched for £15,000 to modernise the Regal in Minehead.
The chairman of MATA, Lewis Lintern, warned that "Stars and touring companies won't play at the Regal because of the conditions".
Some things are very different today. I shall have enjoyed the Regal programme three times this week, ranging from Acker Bilk to our thriving film society and Lewis is still there, as cheerful and hopefully as energetic as ever.
But he and his band of volunteers are still fighting to raise funds to complete the modernisation and it is verging on a public scandal that a theatre which has become the focal point of cultural and social life in West Somerset, is still denied the relatively modest funds to complete the job.
There cannot be many more deserving causes for Heritage Lottery Fund support.
Even in these difficult financial times, surely we can generate more media and parliamentary assistance to see the modernisation through to finality.
Without the help of the Lift Project, some of us will find the stairs a bit too steep within the next few years.
Peter Middleton,
King Edward Road,
Minehead.