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.
Victoria’s right, of course. Some words are just funny. I mentioned the fact in a talk once (it’s one of my ‘go to’ lines), and when it came to questions at the end a woman offered the supplementary information that Pimlico is the only Tube station to share no letters with the word ‘badger’. This, needless to say, is now another ‘go to’ line.
An important point about ‘St John’s Wood/mackerel’ is its utter pointlessness. In a world full of Brexit projections and pronoun-angst, how wonderful is it to encounter a fact whose sole purpose is to make you laugh? Though not everyone gets the joke. Mention it in mixed company and half the people will roar with delight, while the other half will shake their heads in bewilderment.
My partner remains resolutely in the latter camp. These days her sigh of despair tends to appear before I’ve reached the apostrophe in ‘John’s’.
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