ANY time that Tesco is challenged on the subject they deny that their out-oftown ‘super-stores’ are destroying the nearby town centres.

Tesco’s denial has recently belied here, where on the forecourt of their store on Newbury Road they have just opened a subsidiary branch, providing ‘key-cutting, dry-cleaning, watchrepairs and engraving’ – and a further nail driven into the commercial heart of Andover town centre.

That is why Messrs Tesco endow them with the soubriquet ‘Extra’ — and all extras are, IN FACT, being pirated from local town centre.

The much vaunted ‘open 24 hours’ is not ‘service 24 hours’: one ‘extra’ Tesco fails dismally in achieving to get the daily newspapers on sale first thing in the morning from their so called ‘Extra’ in Andover.

Paddy Keenan, Ward Close, Andover