John using the tweezers to delicately organise the letters. (Picture: Mercury Press & Media)

It’s the question that has been on every person’s lips – quite literally in a way – but few have ventured to have answered.

Just how many of each letter are there in a tin of alphabet spaghetti?

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Well John Stitch has spent nearly four hours taking part in a forensic investigation to find out.

He used two cans of 75p Heinz pasta and a pair of tweezers to take the letters out individually.


His research method, reasoning and conclusion is as detailed, boring and long-winded as you would hope it to be.

The tins of alphabet spaghetti John used (Picture: Mercury Press & Media)

He said: ‘Yesterday me and my wife Deirdre went shopping at the big Tesco and when I was looking for some tins of beans I saw some tins of Alphabetti spaghetti and I have not seen any of them for a long time so we bought two tins and they cost 75p each.

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‘Today I saw the tins in the cupboard and I thought “I wonder if them tins have got all of the letters of the alphabet in” so I thought I would find out.



‘So I got a tin and I opened it and I got a strainer and I tipped all the letters into it and all the tomato sauce went into a pan.

‘Then I got Deirdre’s tweezers and I picked all the letters out of the strainer and I put them all on a chopping board and when I finished I tipped all the letters back into the pan with the tomato sauce in it and then I did it with the other tin.

The contents of tin 1 (Picture: Mercury Press & Media)

Just one A in the second tin (Picture: Mercury)

‘I found out that both of the tins had got all the letters of the alphabet in and tin 1 had 180 letters in it and tin 2 had 179 letters in it and both tins had some bits of letters in that broke off but I didn’t count them.

‘It was hard to do because the letters were a bit slippery because of the tomato sauce and when Deirdre came home we had it for our tea on some toast and we both had two sausages with it as well.’

A step by step guide to John exploring his Alphabet Spaghetti John first got a sieve, a chopping board and some tweezers (Picture: Mercury Press) He then meticulously drained the liquid from the from the two alphabet spaghetti tins (Picture: Mercury Press) Then laid out the letters individually from A-Z (Picture: Mercury Press) Then began the process of counting each letter side by side, using tweezers to pluck each one out then place them on his chopping board (Picture: Mercury Press)

John is taking accusations of being boring in his stride.

‘It’s a compliment to be described as boring,’ he said. ‘The idea is to be as boring as possible and not get excited in the write-ups I share online.

‘Britain’s most boring man? To be perfectly frank I’m one of the most interesting people in real life.’