What is the only London Underground station to share no letters with ‘mackerel’?

Don’t worry, this isn’t a piece about fishing quotas. It’s about the word ‘mackerel’ itself. Specifically, the fact that St John’s Wood is the only London Underground station to share no letters with it.

Really? Half a page in The Spectator, just about that? Well, yes. The fact has gathered a life all of its own. It’s been doing the rounds in pub quizzes for ages. At least 20 years: in a trailer for his 1999 TV chat show, Jeremy Clarkson promised to reveal the answer (and then didn’t). No less an authority than Only Connect host Victoria Coren Mitchell calls it her favourite quiz question ever. ‘It’s the comic juxtaposition,’ she explains. ‘Putting a funny word like “mackerel” next to a grand, elegant place like St  John’s Wood.’ Note that ‘St’, by the way. That’s how it’s spelled on the Tube map: if it were ‘Saint’ the fact wouldn’t work.

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