Paul means ‘small” and if you call someone a “berk”, it’s Cockney rhyming slang for Berkshire Hunt, so I wasn’t blessed with the best of monikers. I didn’t get too much stick at school – not with Colin Looney in the year below. Over caffeine the other day with my friend James Ballantyne (now that’s a good name), we discussed names and both envied the one bestowed on a mutual acquaintance called Peter Gunn. The worst he’d have got at school would have been people humming this famous tune at him. Poor Colin Looney would have given anything for that.
I’d have liked a more distinguished name.

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