There have been very few Nigels in my life, unless you count my colleague and friend in the army all those years ago. However, he travelled under the name ‘Jesus’, which strongly suggests that he had already renounced his nigelness by the early 1980s.
Indeed, according to the Office of National Statistics, Nigels have had a shocking millennium to date, and aren’t even represented in the top 100 boys’ names. Which means that every Oliver, Leo, Archie, Alfie, Oscar, Freddie, Logan, Noah, Hunter and George is at least 90 places above them. Basically, royal children, star signs and creators of arks are in, but Nigels definitely are not.
Like me, you will be wondering why.
It may be that the name sounds slightly like the school swot, just like Roger sounds like the annoying child who pocketed all the sweets before anyone else had got to the party. It may be that very few premiership footballers have been called Nigel in the last couple of decades; (in 2012, there were more called Wojciech, Branislav, Henrique and Gunnar); or that royal princes are currently favouring shorter, more earthy names. However, just as Attila was probably right out of favour among the Ostrogoth community back in the second half of the fifth century, it may just be that we are collectively associating the name ‘Nigel’ with something we find faintly disagreeable.
Now, I subscribe to the Betjeman notion that ‘approval of what is approved of, is as false as a well kept vow’, and I waste hours of my life trying to go to great lengths to test and find fault in reasonable, crowd pleasing views. However, in the case of the only Nigel that I currently know of in public life, I am simply unable to do this. This may be entirely unreasonable, for all I know, but he appears to me to be what my old grandfather used to call a ‘wrong ‘un’. God knows what it is: the felt-collared coat perhaps, or the extruded bonhomie, the rather mean views repackaged as only reasonable, the oh-so-cheeky pint, or the school sneak habit of saying of ‘I told you so’.
Again, for all I know, he may be a tireless hospice volunteer, or a frequent server at a late night soup kitchen, but he just doesn’t do it for me. My fault, I’m sure, but, like my irrational loathing of pears, I suspect it’s not going to change.
And the problem I have right now is that he has found a way of insinuating himself into the veins and arteries of my social media. If it wasn’t for his relentless climbing into my semi-private spaces, I would now be leaving him alone, much as I have for the last 56 years. His politics are his own business, as far as I am concerned, until he squeezes them into the private gaps in my life, in which case he becomes open season. I felt marginally out of control on this until recently, when I discovered that I am still, just about, in control. I can ‘snooze Nigel for 30 days’ or ‘see less of him’, both of which are cheerful thoughts for a naughty world. I can ‘report this post’, which I do, each time I see one, and I can press ‘mute’ if he edges his oleaginous way into a news item, or seemingly innocent video. If I were his friend, I could ‘unfriend’ him, or simply ‘hide’ him, like a teenage boy might hide porn under a mattress. As someone who was once a teenage boy, I think that this may be being slightly unfair to the porn.
I love this concept. Suddenly, overnight, I can ‘snooze Nicola Sturgeon for 30 days’, ‘see less’ of Laura Kuennsberg, report Donald Trump for obscenity and just mute Boris full stop. So Nigel no longer bugs me. Technological know-how has equipped me with all the tools I need to wash him out of my life, which I have almost successfully done.
It is now my ambition to find space in my life for other Nigels, and to work towards getting them back into that all-important top 100.
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