I asked if anyone remembered Fenning’s Fever Cure and the response was feverish.

Now readers have recalled other over the counter medicines from 50 and 60 years ago.

Bernard Flooks lists: zambuk for cuts and grazes, Carter’s little liver pills, cephos for headaches, zinc ointment for cuts and scratches, caolim poultice for boils and Elliman’s Embrocation.

Bronwen Cruickshank has a more detailed explanation of patent recipes and traditional treatments from the days when baths were once a week, children crackled at school and bald men would try anything to grow hair.

How about mustard baths: “One or two tablespoons in a bowl of hot water (we didn’t use a bathful as recommended as we only had baths on Fridays) as hot as you could bear and you had to place your feet in the mustard water. It was a remedy for colds, aches, pains, rheumatism and arthritis.”

Bread poultices: “As hot as you could bear, used to cure numerous things such as chilblains, in-growing toenails, cuts and grazes.”

Kaolin poultices: “Hot as you could bear, placed on boils and carbuncles to ‘bring them out’ or ‘bring them to a head’.”

Goose grease: “Rubbed on your chest and covered with brown paper for coughs. This was very embarrassing at school as, when you moved, you crackled!”

Golden Eye Ointment: “For use on styes.”

Raspberry vinegar: “The only cough medication I liked which makes me think it had a lot of sugar in it.”

Warm olive oil: “Dripped into the ear and then plugged with cotton wool so that it didn’t run out.”

Boiled onions: “Wrapped in a tea towel or something similar and placed around the neck as a cure for sore throats.”

Beechams Powders: “For colds and ‘flu; the powder was folded in paper.”

Camphorated oil: “We always had a bottle of this in the cupboard. It was dripped onto a handkerchief or used as a steam inhalation to cure blocked noses.”

Raw onions: “My dad used to rub these on his bald patch to see if they would cure his baldness but it didn’t work.”

Chicken droppings: “He also had a go at rubbing chicken droppings on his bald patch, but this didn’t work either and my mum soon put a stop to that!”

Fenning’s Fever Cure: “Gargled with as well as taken as a drink for sore throats and colds.”

Sloans Liniment: “Rubbed on the skin to relieve general aches, pains and strains.”

Bronwen adds: “I wonder if any of your readers can come up with any more weird and wonderful cures?”

Another cold calling story that left a reader upset.

Bronwyn Brook says: “I’ve just had a call from a rough voiced woman who wanted to know if I’d received information on electricity.

“When I asked her what she meant and who she was calling for she got quite shirty and said had I received anything through the post? I said if I got anything I didn’t understand it went in the bin. She said: ‘Oh you are a horrible little lady aren’t you?’ and put the phone down on me. I tried 1471 but, of course, no number.

“I still don’t know what she was talking about but feel incensed that she invaded my privacy, abused me and got paid for it!

“I am on the Telephone Preference list for what good that is. Do you know what she was talking about?”

Sadly, the Telephone Preference Service seems unable to do anything about cold calling.

Fortunately, I haven’t had any for some time. If the call is a recorded message, they usually give you the option to opt out if you listen until the end.

If not, I tell the operative I’m not interested and ask them to remove me from their list. Sadly, some callers are badly trained and rude.

British scientists want to send a rocket to the moon to discover whether a permanent base could be built there.

Trouble is, they don’t have the necessary £500m to pay for it. So they have done what John Barrowman did, they’ve turned to crowdfunding and asked the public to pay.

Barrowman’s fans all rallied round and put cash in the kitty so he could make his last album after Sony Records dropped him as a recording artist.

Of course, he didn’t need half a billion pounds but the principle is the same. Anyone with an idea – crazy or laudable – who can’t get conventional backing can go online, register with one of the professional funding sites and see if Joe Public will invest a tenner a head.

Or more, if they’re really foolish.

A bloke in America wanted funds to make a type of remote control for everyday items. He got $1.21 million. A chap got $444,000 for an origami kayak and another raised $55,000 to make potato salad. Other projects include sending a Tardis into space, marketing a strap for a water melon and building a cube. It doesn’t do anything, it’s just a cube.

Oh, yes, and someone wanted to make Lionel Richie’s head. Not his real one, but an inflatable version.

A young man in America even asked for $8 funding to buy a burrito. In return he said he would write about his enjoyment of it.

He got more than $1,000. So I’ve been thinking of launching my own project which will be a piece of serious research to quantify the reality of David Cameron’s concept of a Big Society by discovering how the other half live.

Just send money in the usual brown envelopes and I’ll buy a big house, a Bentley, invest in private health, have cosmetic surgery, take holidays in the sun and put what’s left in an offshore account in the Cayman Islands.

In return, I’ll write a blog about my life three days a week. Can’t say fairer than that.