And now, in other news... Mmm, doesn’t seem to have been much, apart from Krakatoa erupting, so let us press on to this week’s subject – nicknames. We have recently seen the deaths of former Chelsea goalkeeper Peter “The Cat” Bonetti and Leonard “Nipper” Read, the detective who was ceaseless in his pursuit of the Krays, while former Leeds United hard man Norman “Bites yer legs” Hunter has sadly died of Covid-19. Bonetti was remembered on the Today programme by Ron “Chopper” Harris, while an obituary of Read mentioned Jack “the Hat” McVitie and Frank “Mad Axeman” Mitchell. (My abiding memory of “Chopper” Harris was him being propelled into orbit by Portsmouth’s Harry Harris, who, if memory serves, was affectionately known as “Peg Leg”. Not a man to cross.)
Such evocative names and yet sadly, we seem to have no equivalents in recent years. The best we can muster are Gazza, Stevie G and Frankie Lamps (former footballers, m’lud) and “Dishy” Rishi Sunak. Pretty feeble offerings. The only comparable moniker to the great ones of yore is James “Mad Dog” Mattis and even he has faded from view, having fallen foul of The Donald. (See what I mean – feeble.)
Equally feeble are the efforts of the subtitler on the otherwise excellent Babylon Berlin, from Sky Atlantic, set in Weimar Germany and chock full of violence and sex. And yet on a number of occasions, when a character has just described another in clearly vicious and fruity terms, we have been given “nitwit”, “ninny”, “scallywag” and “termagant”. Seeing as everything else in the programme is so explicit, this seems like a dereliction of duty. Still, I eagerly await “poltroon” and “milksop”.
What I don’t await with any enthusiasm, though, are any more instances of the use of the word “webinar”, a horrible coinage and all too prevalent. Whoever dreamt it up should be grateful that the Mad Axeman is no longer with us.
•Jonathan Bouquet is an Observer columnist
