I love nicknames. I rarely call people by their given names and most colleagues get a nickname whether they like it or not.Often, the harshest nicknames are the best and most endearing. The Telegraph has had a good run of letters about nicknames over the past week. Today's main letter is a peach:
SIR – Those with experience of the old Stock Exchange floor will readily recall some of the nicknames (Letters, August 22) bestowed upon its habitués.
Among them were two brothers, both with highly distinguished military careers and both winners of the Military Cross, one with bar and one without.
The latter acquired the sobriquet of “The Coward”.
Quentin Smith
Dunley, Hampshire
11 comments:
Spontaneous British sense of humour really; quite impenetrable to non-natives.
My best mate in the police had followed his father into the job. His father was a slacker who'd got a plum job inside doing carpentry repairs.
My mate's nickname ?
Jesus.
There was a dog of a WPC. Bad oral hygiene. She was called ...
... Carpet Teeth.
There was a chap who'd reached for the wrong jar in the dark for lubrication whilst shagging a lush nurse in the section house, he was thereafter known as ...
... Bovril
A copper who'd been alleged to have taken a tenner left behind by a cashpoint customer (his real name Kezobansky) thereafter known as ...
... Cashbansky
A rather excitable WPC whose ecstatatic yelps could be heard through the section house had her double-barrelled name changed from Becky Seizmann-Kruit to ...
... Becky Sizzling-Crutch
The only black PC in the force was known as ...
... The Token
Grettings Idle.....Farqs here. I used to work with a quite extraordinarily pompous arse called Robert Woolf who was brought back down to ground on a regular basis by being called Bobby Fox.........he couldn't stand it!!
Btw, congrats to Idle daughter number one on her results and we are much looking forward to having number two on the premises tonight!
Your hospitality to the younger idle daughter is splendid, farqs. She surprised all of us by getting a B in her Science GCSE (which included a staggering A in the chemistry paper). The Common Room of that expensive school we patronise should be congratulated on a minor miracle.
See you at Lord's on Thursday from tea onwards. Gavaskar Box, Tavern Stand.
Nicknames are an unrecognised English national treaure and a good laugh, mine having teenage origin.
Great idea Iders!
My favourite is still a chum, Phil Hall, whom we called 'Village'!
Welcome back BTW, we need some money...
"The Coward": very funny.
The nicest nickname I ever had was "Pigpen". The others are just embarrassing and when I tell people they just start using them, so *shan't, so there*.
Sir Herbert Naylor-Leyland Bt was nicknamed "Baghdad", having accidentally peppered his father during a shooting party.
Very good Alceste!
TMS was vintage today - sadly no cricket though...
I dread to think what my nickname might be. Hope all is well with you, Idle. Congrats to your babe in getting such splendid results.
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