There is a specific, low-grade misery that attaches to sharing a name with someone more famous than you — not catastrophic, just a persistent splinter you can never quite work out. The Guardian letters page, sparked by two Stephen Mosses discovering each other on the same masthead, has opened the floor to sufferers, and the responses are better than the original prompt. The standout entry is Ian A Anderson of Cambridge, who was signed to Island Records in early 1969 at the same time as the other Ian Anderson — the one who fronts Jethro Tull, plays the flute on one leg, and gets listed in the Guardian birthdays column. Ian A Anderson does not. This has rankled for over five decades, and the letter's controlled fury about being two weeks older than a man who eclipsed his name is one of the more satisfying minor grievances in recent newspaper correspondence. Robin Lustig of London raises the stakes with a factual trump card: the Guardian once ran a piece bylined 'Duncan Campbell and Duncan Campbell,' two different journalists covering the same Home Office secrecy proposal. The detail — that the article concerned a law that would recast journalism as spying — is either a coincidence or a joke the universe was making at the paper's expense. Carol O'Byrne's contribution is the most human: two Gillian Davieses at Swansea University, neither with a middle name, distinguished on the final degree results list by their home towns in brackets. Gillian Davies (Wrexham) and Gillian Davies (Tonyrefail). O'Byrne closes by hoping the years have been kind to both of them, which is the exact right note — warm without being sentimental, specific without being intrusive. Rachel David of Sutton Coldfield suggests the two Stephen Mosses be invited to the Guardian's 'Dine Across the Divide' feature, which is the kind of joke that works precisely because it doesn't oversell itself. The letters page as a form depends on this economy — four sentences, one observation, no wasted motion. At its best, it's a craft form that journalists who write 3,000-word features sometimes can't match.
