Christened differently to parents' wishes

Me, too - 'Boy' sort of rolls of your tongue easier than 'Herbert' doesn't it?

 

We just thought that grandmother had had so many children that she forgot what she had named the early ones!
Further to the story, my late mother-in-law (aunt Mavis' sister) was named Albertha Evelyn but she wanted to be called Julia - she wasn't as fortunate as aunt Mavis as she was just called Bertha all her life.

 

When my mother went back to work in the mid 1950's her new boss misread her first name "Ivy" as "Joy" and that is how she was introduced. If you were to see her handwriting you would understand that this was an easy mistake. She liked the name and continued to use it particularly as it coincided with the year in which she met her future husband. Her mother had decided to be known as Marguerite rather than Margaret by the time she married my grandfather. My first name was shortened almost as soon as I went to school because there was already a girl in the class with the longer version. When I came to Canada I gradually went back to the longer version so there are now three generations who knew by the name someone used in referring to them the length of their acquaintance/kinship/friendship.

 

No regional dialect involved but said in a squeaky juvenile female voice which became a popular catchphrase of the programme. I know I used to imitate it when a friend of my sister of the same name came calling; much to the annoyance of both and a scolding from my mother

 

Young man!

 

FYI (Wiki): Songs on the programme came from the Beaux and the Belles, and Bob and Alf Pearson provided the musical interlude—"We bring you melodies from out of the sky, my brother and I!" Bob also played the little girl Jennifer who, asked her name, would coyly reply: "Jen-ni-fer!"

Thanks, Bob Pearson and Bob Spiers- you've been 'bobbing up' all my life and my 'inner child' is wincing again!

I have always been fascinated by the origin of my family's catchphrases and have been thinking about the expression you used "Bob's your uncle" and found this source. The usual re-affirming riposte to the remark "and Fanny's your aunt" was used, apparently, by Johnny Depp in 'Pirates of the Caribbean' and, I like to think, won its own Oscar

 

The memory can play tricks (surely I'm not thinking of " I'll give it Five" Janice) Also I do tend to 'blend' tunes e.g. "Ray's a Laugh" sounds very much like "Take it from here" in my head

 

I seem to remember listening to ITMA (It's that man again) on the "wireless". Who was he?

 

I think 'That Man' was originally Hitler, (i.e. the one people kept hearing about)but the lead of the show was Tommy Handley
(and this is all LONG before my time)

Wikipedia confirms 'The title refers to a contemporary phrase concerning the ever more frequent news-stories about Hitler in the lead-up to World War II"

******
When I was child we had a card game (probably still in my mother's possession) called Bob's Your Uncle. I seem to recall it was one of those games where you collects sets - and I have an idea it included some very non-PC cartoon images of Africans. Does it ring a bell with anyone?

 

So do I! He was the first born child and his name was Egerton. It seems he was only called 'Boy' as a child.

 

I have a story (well two really) about someone known to all as Son. He was my wife's uncle (married to her mother's sister) and he was just Uncle Son. I asked family how he came by the name but no one seemed to know - that was just his name! I was only much later that I discovered he had been christened Herbert.

He was truly a lovely man who would do anything for everyone without expectation of reward. He lived up to the old saying 'he wouldn't say boo to a goose' (and no I do not know where that came from). However apart from his quite unique sobriquet the most memorable thing about him was a (very) badly fitted hairpiece; which to give him his due, he wore with complete indifference. It was just Uncle Son wearing a hair piece and so what if it didn't fit all that well?

Some while after he died I accompanied my wife to visit her elderly aunt (Son's wife) who was then in her late 80's. After talking awhile she actually told us the story of the hairpiece. Apparently after going bald Son had been determined to afford a good hair piece and when he had saved up for it (as they did in those days) he went to London to have it fitted. On the way home he popped his head out of the window of a steam locomotive carriage window and the hair piece came away and was lost to the wind. His widow said he was so distraught that on his return he bought an off the peg one (if that's the right expression) and (apart from his wife) never told a soul of his experience.

 

I am sure it's not this obvious but my father had exactly the same first name as his father and no middle name. As he was an only child he was known as "Sonny" throughout his childhood and my grandmother always called him that. I presume that if a brother had come along some other nickname would have had to been found! By the way liked the hair piece story .

 

Not sure about that - nicknames tend to stick, even when outgrown. I know it's fictional but in 'God of Small Things' one of the main characters is Great Aunt Baby. And I believe that one of Prince Philip's sisters was always called Tiny from babyhood, even though she grew to be the tallest of the girls in the family.

 

.... and in fact used to tease his mother that his hair was much lighter then as she used to wash it with Sunlight household soap. The link includes a great image of bars of Sunlight soap found at Sir Ernest Shackleton's hut (c 1906 -07) at the South Pole ... (but I digress )

 

A friend of mine (she is 86 now) was always known as 'Bunty'. On her 21st birthday she came down to breakfast and there was an envelope on the kitchen table addressed to 'Frances'. She opened her birthday cards and later went off to work. When she got home in the evening, her father asked why she had not opened the letter he had left for her.....she had become so used to her nickname that she did not realise the letter was for her !

 

Go on, we love these digressions.