I’ve noticed a rather disturbing trend. When a member of the editorial team sends me something to review or tweak, I often say to them “I’ve Cleopatra’d it” – referring to the song by the girl band, ie “it’s coming atcha”

This has been almost semi-conscious and even though I’ve now realised quite how naff it is, it doesn’t seem to bother me and I still keep doing it. I often get looks from the team – somewhere between rolled eyes and sympathy – and it’s made me question whether indeed I am becoming my father.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love my dad dearly, but this is the same kind of joke he would make with my 14 year old little sister, who’d roll her eyes just as much.

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During one of our regular scrabble games (see past ‘I scored 596 at Scrabble: why does it depress me?’ and ‘Rude words in my new Scrabble dictionary’ scrabble blogs) I used the term “DELINKED” as an eight letter word scoring me around 90 points. The MSF challenged this saying she’d never heard of it.

I explained it was the term for a request after divorce that your finances are no longer linked on your credit file (see Check your Credit File guide) and thus was fine. We didn’t have our big scrabble dictionary with us (we were playing on the mini-scrabble set) to check so the MSF had no choice but to accept it.

Now actually it’s an Americanism, and tends not to be used as a specific term in the UK, though that should still allow it to be acceptable for Scrabble. Either way, to ensure its veracity, and because it’s nicely descriptive, I’ve just written it in my News of The World column on credit scoring, for a week Sunday. After all, if it appears in a National Newspaper it can’t be disputed can it…

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