You may remember me telling you about the young lady BBC News reporter I discovered one day while watching the lunchtime news and whose name is Julia Caesar (sadly, she doesn’t don a toga to deliver her on the spot news reports); I was actually going to ring her Mum and Dad to have a go at them but they are ex directorium.

This reminded me about some names I encountered when (often) thumbing through one of the issues of the erstwhile Kelly’s Directory of Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch. My predecessor at the office where I worked had thoughtfully kept all available editions of that splendid work (1935 to 1973, if I remember rightly) and it had come in useful on countless occasions. It had two sections, one with entries ordered by address which were alphabetical, split into subsections depending which side of the road (geographically) they occupied, and punctuated with indications of when other roads joined the one you were examining – marvellous! The other part was an alphabetical list of occupiers – I’d like to see Mr Kelly try and slip that one past the Information Commissioner and his data protection Nazis.

I find it inconceivable that some parents seem oblivious to the consequences of the names they give their offspring and I could only begin to wonder what abuses and indignities must have been suffered by Mr and Mrs Hood’s son, Robin – it’s true, I tell you! In later life, he would surely have been marched straight to the nick if he gave that name to the police. And I desperately wanted him to marry a woman called Marian, but Mr Kelly stopped producing his magnum opus in 1973 and I never found out whether he did or not. And you can believe me or not, because it’s often a joke, but I really did find a Justin Thyme. And a Carol Carroll: shameful. I wonder what sort of car Austin Healey’s dad drove?

There was actually a national newspaper article on just this subject, which opens with an exhortation to sympathise with the likes of Barb Dwyer and Paige Turner, just two of the many unfortunates who had turned up in a recent survey. Investigations further afield, notably in the US, uncovered such gems as Carrie Oakey and Bill Board.

One of my favourites is the retired airman from Gloucester, Stan Still. He was interviewed by the BBC and explained that his name had been “a blooming millstone around my neck my entire life. When I was in the RAF, my CO used to shout ‘Stan Still, get a move on!’ then roll about laughing. It got hugely boring after a while.”

Finally, a Susan Mee from Doncaster wrote: “I used to be Susan Frame; I am a lawyer and my husband Robert is a banker; now we are Sue Mee, a lawyer, and Rob Mee, a banker.”

There are many others that I’m sorry I never found: Alan Key, Ben Downe, Arabella Fontie, Daley Starr, Minnie Cooper…I could go on.

But I won’t.