Why are there so many news stories featuring the letter G? Yesterday, the huge security firm G4S announced plans to buy a cleaning and catering outfit called ISS. Assuming the deal goes through, the company will become the second-largest private employer in the world (after Walmart) and hopes to create 5,000 British jobs a year.
Then there was the Good Governance Group – or G3, as it is better known. G3, it turned out, had been one of the sponsors behind Adam Werritty's international gallivanting. Shortly before that, a large water main had burst in the centre of Glasgow, cutting off the supply to hundreds of homes (and threatening thousands more) in the G5, G41, G42, G43 and G44 postcodes.
So it was no surprise to hear yesterday that the World Scrabble Championships in Poland had been shocked by the discovery of – that's right – a missing letter G. After losing a match by one point, Thai player Chollapat Itthi-Aree insisted that his English opponent Ed Martin should be strip-searched to see if he had hidden the tile somewhere intimate. Whether he had, or whether the G had just slipped quietly through a wormhole in space, we will never know. The judges' preference was to let the matter rest.
