my real name has took 20 years for someone to work out a rhyming insult to. But that's not really the point. Nor is the fact that at uni there were so many James' they all had their own 'wacky' nicknames, Including one, who has gone onto great artistic fame and fortune with his, and deservedly at that (it's a very good nickname, though).

No, the' best' nickname I ever came across was FLY. And was owned by a tiny lad with huge pebble glasses. But not because of those. Oh no. It was an inherited title, passed down from kid to kid on his estate, "in the of the way of the Phantom", I was reliably informed. When you gave it up you gave it to someone else, and you then became SPIDER.

I spent many years wondering if you would eventually reach the dizzy heights of HORSE then the inevitable rank of OLD LADY if this system continued in that vein...

EDIT: also remembered I went to college with a lad in my english class named Gilbert. Until the last week of term when a tutor checks the register, and shouts the name Dale. Which turned out to be him. Apparently, years ago people had started calling him Gilbert because it fitted his ginger lanky appearance better than the somewhat more chisel-jawed-Amercian-soap-opera name Dale, and it sort of stuck.
(niceandwarmandhot vive la résistance, Fri 19 May 2006, 14:38, Reply)