A question from a regular of mine caused the cobwebs of my economic knowledge to become firmly lodged so I hie'd me off to a library in search of the very simple answer. I found the answer I was looking for quite quickly and felt the walk in justified more than just a five minute read. So I looked at the Oxford English Disctionary, full version, letter 'F'. I bet you didn't know that the word flat occupies about three pages in the OED. It does! In Who's Who 2002 there is only one person called Utting and there are no Duncan Williamsons. David Beckham is there and so is that dunderhead chef Anthony Worrall Thompson ... he has hundreds of names all in a row and I was a bit surprised to find that he's older than I am. Debrett's Peerage is a fountain of knowledge and you can read about such luminaries as Jeffrey Archer and his appalling attempts at dressing up his schlastic attainments: a minor public school in Somerset and Brasenose College Oxford: it doesn't say that he was at Oxford for only a year and that he was on a sports not an academic scholarship. Peter Carrington is still there and there are Lords Spiritual by the dozen. There are Lords and Ladies that most of us never have and never will hear about. Since 1952 Phil the Greek (the Duke of Edinburgh to the rest of us) has been granted precedence over all men in the realm including, I was surprised to read, the Heir Apparent: that's Charles. That three feathered emblem that Charles carries around with him is nothing, apparently, to do with being Prince of Wales: they are not the Prince of Wales' feathers, it is the emblem of the Heir Apparent. That book costs £250 by the way and I am sure Abingdon is riddled with people who are fighting over themselves to read this mighty tome rather than the 10 - 30 other books that could have been bought for the same amount of money. DW