Back as a young student my friends and I would explore the pubs of Edinburgh and occasionally even speak to the locals, this one particular group of lads were noteable by their pronunciation of my friend’s name, “No, it’s Philippa”,”Yeah, Phulupuh”, “No, you’re saying Phulupuh”, “Yeah, that’s what you’re saying”,”No we’re saying Phil e pah, not Phulupuh”, and so it went on and on. We also noticed that here girls were girruls and films were fillums, oh, and in Chippies we had to say very quickly if we didn’t want sa’n’sauce on our chips as they were usually putting it on as they asked.

On a few years and I realised if someone was talking about Dawn, they were probably talking about Don. It did explain a few things about the stories I’d heard about her/him. Then with Bud there was the long-running “khaki/car key” debate, apparently I say it like “car key” which is not the same as “khaki” at all according to Bud, who, of course, was always supposedly correct.

So the Squirrel Show was water off a duck’s back to me, been there, done that and got the t-shirt. I had no idea what the Squirrel Show was, but I saw it mentioned on Facebook that Mark Steel, Will Seaward and John-Luke Roberts were appearing, among many others, and it was a one-off for charity, hey ho, why not?

The whole premise is to help the comedian Chris Coltrane to say “squirrel” properly instead of “squirle”, one audience member went down the Sesame Street route, patiently separating the syllables to join them again, bet she’s a teacher. Some audience members were almost apoplectic (I really couldn’t decide if they were plants to keep it going), and all the other comedians were not helping the situation. John-Luke Roberts was surreal as ever, rushing the stage and dancing every time Walking On Sunshine came on, I did miss the first five minutes but I doubt there was any explanation there. Will tried his best to tell the tale of Big Squirrel and Little Squirrel while being heckled. And, wow, they had Mark Steel to headline, as you would expect he gave a funny but insightful monologue, pure genius!

Apparently, this has been going a few years now. Well worth catching next year, unless mispronunciations drive you insane, on the other hand, it would be fun to take along that friend who’s always correcting others – just light the blue touchpaper and stand well back!