Sunday 24 April 2011

Spring Greens


Is your name Green?


by 'Nomenclator'

1. 10 years ago one Sally Barnes, who worked for a Yorkshire branch of Tesco's, spent £2000 on cosmetic surgery to make her look less like Su Pollard, an actress who enjoyed her hour or two of fame in a TV sitcom called Hi-de-Hi. This Su Pollard once entered a talent contest and came second to a performing dog. The contest, an early edition of Opportunity Knocks, was hosted by a certain Hughie GREEN.

2. Stanley GREEN, however, who died in 1994, was a London sandwich-board man, whose message, sometimes in pamphlet form, was that carnal lust is brought on by eating beans, meat, cheeseburgers and particularly by sitting down. This was the message he brought daily to the Oxford Street crowds and cinema queues, some members of which occasionally attacked him. He cycled daily from Northolt to his work, standing in the saddle.

3. Mary GREEN, maybe a 17th Century ancestress of the above GREENS, claimed to have a licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury allowing her to practise alternative medicine. She had cures for:

a) Windy Vapours
b) Glimmering of the Gizzard
c) Falling of the Fundament
d) The Scotch Disease
e) The Wombling Trot.

Mrs GREEN also produced publicity flyers in rhyme, one of which from 1685 read:

The Cramp, the Stitch,
The Squirt, the Itch,
The Gout, the Stone, the Pox,
The Mulligrubs,
The Bonny Scrubs,
And all Pandora's Box.

*

Please underline as appropriate:

I feel this is an honourable surname and I am privileged to be called GREEN

I am going to change my name by deed poll to GREEN

My name is/is not GREEN and I do/do not wish to be associated with this twaddle and refuse to read any of it.

Good morning.

*

Next week: 'Nomenclator' asks: Is your name Welshcreep?

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