• The colour must be red
• It must have 4 doors
• It must cost less than £30,000

The keyword here is MUST. I learned the true value of the word must in university doing requirements engineering. You have to strictly define what the software must and must not do.

I realise this has been quite boring up until now but we need context people!

I was having a chat with TheFagCasanova about the possible middle name of the Ski Jumper, Andreas Wank. We decided Alan would be best and then we moved onto good cat names and reminded me that I have strict rules for potential cat names.

Before I lay out my rules, I decided to quiz the Twitterati about their cat’s name to see if any subscribed to my strict naming policy. They didn’t disappoint in their diversity

• Big Dave Jeffries
• Fattie
• Thinnie
• Bumble
• Velvet Moon
• Hector
• Bill
• Fluff
• Bob
• Other One
• Lola
• Hamble
• Chloe
• Flower
• Twinkle
• Milo
• Ghandi
• Darren
• Saucepan
• Lao
• Raspberry Watkins
• Bootsie
• Oscar
• Tiger
• Flying Tiger Fury
• Smudge

Aren’t they marvellous? But! as marvellous as they are, only one fits the bill as defined by me

Darren

The splendiferous magicnose nailed it with the only one that truly subscribes to my rules.

So what are my rules? I hear you shout as your spit your fish supper all over the screen (you should really clean that up). Well I’ll tell you, the rules are as follows

MUSTS

• It must not be traditional cats name (Fluffy, Marbles etc)
• It must not be a name that could be attributed to a comedy horse (Colin, Charlie etc)
• It must not be a name that could be attributed to an WW2 army general (Archibald, Wilberforce etc)
• It must not be a name that could be attributed to troubled Anime character (Azrael, Jiro etc)

DESIRABLES

• It should be a name that can be attributed to a man who works in a garden centre
• It should be a full forename (Don’t care for Bob, for example)

EXAMPLES

• Darren
• Liam
• Alan
• John (possibly Johnathan)
• Simon
• Richard
• Robert (not Bob)
• Ian
• Paul
• Matthew (not Matt)

As an example, I went on holiday to Spain with my dad and sister a couple of years ago and I explained these rules to Sophie. We spent a fair chunk of time, a good hour, walking across the big rock of Gibraltar in complete silence save for

Sophie: “Stephen?”

Jason: “With a ph?”

Sophie: “Yeah”

Jason: “Perfect”

We built up quite a list, great fun.

Now I must stress these are my rules, this is my system. I would never begrudge a Cat name you choose, I just personally wouldn’t choose it. I’m not going for a world domination here, no thanks, too much hassle. I just have my own system for naming cats, you can call yours what you like, live and let live. But if you ask me what you should call your cat, then its game on.

This mainly extends to Male cats. Because the ladies have two X chromosomes they are twice as varied and thus harder to define. Us males only have one X and the Y is redundant meaning we’re a lot easier to pigeon hole, it’s a pleasure.

Naming female cats is like plotting a ladies drinking timeline, the typical male drinking timeline is a lot easier to nail down. There are obviously some deviations from the mean but this is a good indicator of where a man is in his life

Cheap Cider/Alcopop >> Cheap Lager >> Stronger Lager >> Proper Cider >> Stout >> Real Ale >> Real Ale with a Handle >> Whiskey Straight >> Whiskey with Water >> Death

Women? I’ll be buggered if I know. Female cat names? Same story.

So there you have it, my hard and fast rules for an acceptable name for a Male Cat. Hell why not? female cats too. To be honest it would be quite funny to own a girl cat called Andrew (not Andy).

I asked around twitter and a few things came up

• X Files
• Fabric Textures
• Spiderman Comics
• Making Tea
• Photoshop
• Buffy
• Making Popcorn
• Cheese and Onion Pasties
• Obscure Cutlery and Etiquette
• Eating a Whole Big Bag of Haribo Tangfastic in One Quick Sitting
• The Availability of Twirls in London (http://londontwirls.blogspot.com/)
• The Circumstances of My Sneezes (http://www.sneezecount.joyfeed.com/)
• Sugarcraft
• Playing Spy on TFC (Team Fortress Classic)

I was having a chat with Sam and the course of discussion turned to sampling free products for market research and it triggered a memory of the one time I was taste tested. Even though I’d forgotten it, I remember it like it was yesterday.

This was during my college years at plucky old Barton Peveril. Barton Peveril is in Eastleigh, a thorough toilet of a town near Southampton. We would often go to the town centre during our free periods to mooch about. There was nothing really there to do except eat and wait but it beat doing that at on campus.

Whilst plodding around we were approached asking us if we’d like to try a new kind of crisp. Being bored we of course agreed and were whisked to an open plan room full of people being interviewed with plates of crisps in front of them.

The crisps they were testing were Bugles. This was the early 00’s (remember them?) and they were about to launch. The wiki says they now sell over here but I rarely see them anymore and avoid them like the plague if I do, which is the point I’m meandering towards.

When I was interviewed I was asked to pick my favourite flavour, I picked Salt & Vinegar, my weapon of choice. Now the Bugle people hadn’t really considered what they were contending with, for you see

I am an expert on Salt & Vinegar crisps

I shall illustrate this with what went down and then elaborate on some further theories I have. They made 2 errors:

1. Putting their weight behind an inferior crisp
2. Taste testing it against two heavyweights of the s&v crisp world

With regards to point 1, I think we all know this by now but I shall declare

Bugles are rubbish

They’re far too wheaty. This means the crisps taste like nothing but wheat and any flavour they have been imbued with is absorbed by said wheat making them a weak effort. A vague whiff of salt & vinegar when I want the flavour to knock my block off.

I could probably handle the banality if the competition wasn’t so fierce. They let me try two bad boys, Quavers and Discos.

I couldn’t find a picture of Quavers as I think they maybe now lost to the pantheons of crisp history…crisptory. Though I think they maybe multipack only. This would be a shame as the Cheese Quavers are horrible.

Anyway, Salt & Vinegar Discos are still going strong and are bold, bloody powerful though also a little dry. That said they were more than enough to beat the pathetic Bugle.

Now they didn’t give the names of these crisps but I’m an expert, I could pick em off a mile away.

When asked for my opinion, I was blunt. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but I know it was scathing about the poor quality of the Bugles, I was quite enjoying telling them just how crap their crisps were and I left them with a lot to think about. The crisps didn’t change.

There’s only one thing that could be possibly going through your brain now

So Mr Smarty Pants, what is the best kind of Salt & Vinegar crisp?

I’ll tell you and less of your lip thank you very much. Novices among you might assume I’d pick something twatty like Kettle Chips. Bleurgh, no. The vinegar is far too sweet and the crisps themselves are too big. It shows a complete lack of understanding and an arrogance for which I have no time. Fuck off Kettle Chips and all your brethren of presumptuous garbage.

Now.

There are a few contenders but I know my favourite. Discos are quite good but as I said quite dry. Some people like dry crisps which I can fully understand, live and let live.

If you’re looking for a dry salt & vinegar crisp, you can’t say fairer than these.

Of course! Square crisps.

I swear by these when I’m feeling dry. Sharp, robust and full of flavour. They are a joy eaten out of the packet or made into a sandwich. I would usually get Squares in multipacks, eat all the Salt & Vinegar, trundle through the admirable Cheese & Onion and then trudge through the frankly boring Ready Salted.

Though they are not the best Salt & Vinegar potato crisp adventure that you can take your taste buds on. That honour is reserved for

Here it stands. The king of crisps. Chipsticks.

The maize and potato snack, made for us by the crisp gods to stave of lingering hunger with a brand of flavour second to no bastard. Layered with delicious oily, vinegary stuff, stands this monolith of snack food.

Dry crisps lack of oil means it lacks the full punch that only Chipsticks can bring.

Take yourself on a roller-coaster ride of flavour as you shove 5 in your mouth at once, getting grubby fingers before digging out the lumps of maize caught in the bridge of your mouth. Heaven.

So there you go, that’s my field of expertise as I see it. You might not agree, but hey, you’re wrong.

There’s only one thing left to ask, what’s your area of expertise?

‘congratumalations’

It’s great! Sounds better and underlines a core daftness I like to lace my entire life with.

I think it’s genesis came from the Simpsons and Homer’s adorable pronunciation of the phrase ‘Saxophone’ or as he calls it ‘Saxomaphone’. It was really nailed home in this little exchange between him and a diddy Lisa

Homer: So, what do you like, Lisa? Vio-ma-lin? Tuba-ma-ba? Oboe-mo-boe?

Lisa: [pointing] That one! [Lisa's adorable little digit points up to a beautiful new baritone sax.]

Homer: Oh…saxo-ma-phone. [reads price tag] Two hundred dollars?!

Another one I like a lot is ‘investimagate’. It implies investigating with your tongue out, digging around in a toybox to emerge with playdoh in your hair.

On initial investimagation it seems to work best with 4 syllable words. I can think of a few examples now of good words improved by the addition of a ma

• Communimacation
• Pornomagraphy
• Mandamatory
• Oblimagation
• Unbearamable

I’d love to hear people’s suggestions, 4 syllable words are a good start but there’s gotta be more diverse ones.  Come, share with me the power of ma, We know it is formidamable.