Name

This morning on the radio there’s a guy talking about a prom taking place at the Wigmore Hall — as I only caught a fragment I’m not sure whether it was tonight  — and he says that people are put off by the term classical music but when they hear something like Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony then they realise that they love it (mind you this mythical cast of mind called people doesn’t seem to have an issue with the word classic when it’s applied to classic rock, so maybe what I was listening to was another one of those types that like to dismantle structures that have existed for centuries, employ an advertising company to come up with another name and then discover that people liked the original name in the beginning). I wonder what he wanted to replace classical with? Music?

However, it then led me to think about beer: now and again I am told that people are put off by the word beer, but they actually like it when it’s tasted. Beer is too blokey, too plebby, too commonplace, too wet, too bitter, too dark, too unlike wine. Beer is not just fit for purpose. If that’s true then why doesn’t the brewing industry hire a PR company to come up with a different name and I’m sure that beer (or whatever it’s called — how about bine?) will rise to the highest of heights and such delights as jousting between the champions of cask and craft will be essential viewing throughout the land. The challenge is there.