As a fellow songwriter, I am pleased to inform Derek Hobbs-Ainley he is not too old to write songs (Letters, July 13).

I am living proof songs written after one's 31st birthday can win a prize.

In 1988, I won the Oxfam National Song Contest with an entry actually written after my 30th birthday.

Since then, I have written dozens more. Is this the first time Derek has encountered discrimination? If so, he's lucky. These days if you look an hour older than "youthful", you are invisible in the music business.

Does this philosophy render all songs written before I became 30 redundant?

I can still sing them my talent did not suddenly "blink out" but they are wasted because of the attitudes of promotion organisers.

What does Tim Rice have to say about this? He's over 30, isn't he? It would indeed be a great service to songwriters and artists for someone like him to speak out about the loss of potentially brilliant songs, cast on the scrapheap of ageism.

Songwriting is not like sport, where performance is curtailed by age it is a talent which, more often than not, improves with time.

-Indrani Shough, Brighton