Alex B Cann column: Royal row and identity

In his latest Reporter column, Tameside Radio presenter Alex B Cann gives his take on THAT Harry and Meghan interview and the issue of getting people's names wrong...

Several days on from the Meghan and Harry interview, the dust has yet to settle on the biggest Royal row for a generation, a show more widely watched than even The Masked Singer final. 

I told a true story on Tameside Radio recently about my first experience of racism, which involved walking into a country pub near Harrogate with my wife Sofia (girlfriend at the time), and the whole place falling silent like you see in countless films. 

There was a feeling of ‘what’s she doing in a place like this?’, in spite of the fact she grew up just a few miles down the road in Bradford. I was so shaken by the whole thing that I drove the car into a dry stone wall in the car park whilst beating a hasty retreat! 

My take on the interview is that many people who are vociferously seeking to trash Meghan’s story are perhaps lucky enough not to have experienced first hand the things she spoke about. I’ll leave that one there, I think, before I stir up my own hornet’s nest!

I wanted to talk a bit this week about names, and how important they are for our identity. I asked on social media if anyone has experienced issues with people getting their name wrong, even though it’s written on the email signature right in front of the eyes of the person sending them a reply. My goodness, I had so many replies!

My favourite came from Sue Watts, who wrote: “My husband was admitted to the women’s ward at hospital, as they read his name as Olive not Clive. It has happened on other occasions, but this was by far the best!”

My goodness, after a heavy week of news, this gave me a proper belly laugh. Thank you, Sue.

My friend Alan Huddart used to get his surname auto corrected to Haddock quite frequently by Microsoft, whilst sports journalist Nguvijita Mberiua has to correct people all the time. Admittedly, it’s more of a challenging name than some, but haven’t people heard of copy and paste when replying to emails?

This conversation began when my wife snapped after being called Sophia and Sofa one too many times. Your name is a huge part of your identity and whilst an innocent mistake happens to all of us, people continue to use other spellings even after she’s replied with the correct one! I would be mortified if I got someone’s name wrong, and it’s such an important part of any correspondence, yet so many seem to disregard this basic life rule.

I even remember a wedding DJ getting the bride’s name wrong once at a do in Scotland, and being confronted with a line of irked men in kilts squaring up to him as he hit play on the first dance song!

Joking aside, your name is a big part of who you are. My mate Clara is regularly called Claire, Claira, Clare, Catherine and Kaitlin. She was even called Mark for six months, because that was the name of the engineer she replaced. Go figure. Teela writes on a tweet that she regularly cops for either Sheila or Tina. Someone even slid into her DMs recently asking for advice, and kept calling her Teila, even when she had pointed out that was incorrect!

Shalini writes that her name sometimes auto corrects to ‘Hi Stalin’, which is more than a tad unfortunate. Louise says she gets Lois, Lucy, Lorraine or Leanne. A word salad of names she’s not called.

I’ve had tales of mangled names on NHS records, problems with hyphens when filling in forms, and some light hearted ones too. It seems to be a much bigger issue than I realised! Having spent my life spelling out ‘Cann’ (you’d be amazed how many variations of that I’ve seen!), it’s obvious other people have far bigger issues.

One final tale from the history books that I love. There’s a town in the North East called Eaglescliffe, which has another half called Egglecliffe. It’s not known exactly how this happened, but it’s almost certainly down to a sign writer making a mistake with the name when the railway station was moved. Brilliant.

My life advice is to take a moment to get someone’s name right and that little 10 per cent extra attention to detail might well make their day. In the meantime, I’m counting down the days until April 12 when my barber in Dukinfield is sharpening his shears. Stay safe. 

You can listen to Alex every weekday from 7am to 11am and on the 'Super Scoreboard' show on Saturdays from 3pm to 7pm, on Tameside Radio 103.6FM. 

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