It's a competition, of sorts, this autograph collecting stuff.

If you think about it, there are loads of people like yourselves, people who get all the basics right, and send an SASE, a typed letter, know stuff about the celeb of their choice and so on.

To be very simplistic, if someone receives 1000 fan letters a day, 500 requesting autographs, and decides they can reply to 20 a day, as they actually sign themselves on their day off (or whatever the situation is).

They will eventually get around to signing some more, but, then again, they've shown no effort so they might just get returned to the sender and told that person doesn't sign, or something similar.

Of these 500, 50 just say 'gimme your autograph now' whilst another 50 are written in illegible handwriting and there's no please or thankyou, and so on.

Another 300 show some knowledge, but are of the 'fill-in the blanks' type. That still leaves a hundred from more serious, or more knowledgeable collectors like yourselves, who have done all the 'normal' things correctly, and were polite and showed a good knowledge and so on.

But only 20 will get signed, so there's competition out of all those decent letters for those which are most LIKELY to get the autograph; the better the letter, the higher your chances of success.

So, unsurprisingly, what you have sent needs to stand out, be something more original than the others, since remember: the only contact this person has, or has ever had with you, is that letter of request and its contents. So this is what you will be judged on.