I ENJOYED Francine Clee's amusing column ("Choose: clever or slim?", January 11) but am amazed that any woman would vote to be slim rather than intelligent, because there is really no contest.

Anyone at all can lose weight; however fat a person is and, let's face it, there are some gross examples around of both sexes and all ages, somewhere there is a dietary, surgical, mental or emotional answer to the problem.

On the other hand, intelligence is a God-given, or, for the irreligious, a genetically-endowed benefit which cannot be achieved by the most expensive or carefully-chosen education in the world. You either have it or you don't.

I would love to be really intelligent - because it would make up for any other deficiency in my make-up which I could almost certainly overcome if I put my mind to it.

Beauty, in spite of the obsessive and frantic efforts by women to hang on to it (after all, nothing can get them further along the road to success than to be beautiful - certainly not talent) will eventually succumb to the overtures of Old Father Time.

Money, very welcome as it gives the freedom to live as one chooses, cannot ensure you love, health or true friendship. So I'd go for intelligence every time, given the choice.

One thing missing, however, is the most important of all, even more than financial stability, beauty, intelligence and good health, and that is luck, which surely beats everything as the most desirable of all gifts. I will be interested in what other readers consider the most important.

Heather Causnett,

Escrick Park Gardens,

Escrick,

York.

Updated: 10:15 Saturday, January 14, 2006