Doreen Tipton: Time to Name and Shame. . .

That can’t be easy. Especially if Miss Nackers gets invited to his posh balls – you know, the sort that Cinderella went to – where a footman clutching a scroll loudly announces the names of the guests as they enter. Thomson, who’s reportedly worth about 18 billion quid, may be above all this, but I reckon a lesser mortal would be slightly embarrassed if somebody suddenly shouted to the assembled representatives of high society: “Lord Thomson, with Severine Nackers!” They’d all think he’d got a disease. But to be fair, Thomson has so far sired an impressive five kids from four different women, including Nackers, so clearly there’s nothing wrong with his own pair.

Anyway, it got me thinking about the importance of names, as more and more celebrities go out on a limb to give their kids an unusual brand. Frank Zappa named one of his kids Moon Unit, while American actress Shannyn Sossamon christened her son ‘Audio Science’, because – well, nobody knows why. But that was a waste of time, because it tends to get shortened to Sci, so everybody probably thinks he’s just called Simon.

My own kids, of course, have good, solid traditional names – Trojan, Tangerine, and Troll – and my grandson, Taiser, is rather touchingly named after the stun gun that the policewoman used on our Trojan, which immediately sent her into labour. But there’s no doubt that we do judge folks by their names. The posher you are, the more names you tend to accumulate. Somebody, for example, called Hector Tiberius Willoughby Fanshaw Plunket Fotheringay-Smythe is, on balance, unlikely to live in Tipton. Or if he did, he’d soon move out, having been beaten up on a daily basis by somebody called Dave.

So, one of the manifesto pledges of the Yam-Yam Party will be to introduce a Names Tax. Everybody will get one name free, on the state, plus your surname, and then you have to pay tax on the rest. That’s far more accurate than income tax, because you can tell instantly from people’s names how much money they’ve got. The double-barrelled lot can pay twice, because they’ve always got a few bob. They’d argue it was one name, but I’d tax the hyphen to avoid loopholes. It’s easy to administer as well. Whenever the HMRC spot a name like Fotheringay-Smythe on a tax form, they can say: “Right pal, that’s cost you a couple of grand for a start.”

I’d then take back into state ownership any posh names that end in S, like Miles or Piers, so anybody who wants those will have to rent them annually – a bit like paying your car road tax. I’d also have an extra one-off windfall tax on any particularly annoying names, like Tarquin or Algernon. And anyone called Sebastian, Titus, Hunter or Rufus better think about getting a good accountant.

So that’s my idea for ending the class war in this country. Make all the rich kids change their name to something like Colin, or pay heavily for the privilege of a posh personalised nameplate. And before the SNP start getting all excited about a new tax on the rich, I’d slap a big surcharge on anything starting with ‘Mc’. Come to think of it, that’d also raise a few corporate quid from a certain burger chain.Our new name tax might also stop some working-class folk naming their poor kids after an entire football team. This will also dramatically shorten christenings, which can only be a good thing.

All the money collected will be ring-fenced and go towards setting up counselling sessions and career advice for folk dogged by rubbish surnames – after all, that’s outside of their control and may affect them for the rest of their lives. My research has thrown up some genuine surnames that are unprintable here, such as *******, ****, ***** and ***********.

I admit my new tax system’s not perfect though. On the basis of compensating people with dodgy surnames, whatever money we’d collect from the very wealthy and over-named Lord David Kenneth Roy Thomson would end up going straight back to Miss Nackers. You see – the super rich always manage to find a loophole to avoid tax and keep it in the family.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that’s the only reason Lord Thomson is dating Severine. But he’s clearly a smart businessman, and if he’s already got wind of our new tax, perhaps he’s calculated that going to balls with someone called Nackers is a price worth paying.

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