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Our Crack Little Crack

My girlfriend works for the NHS. (You can stop clapping; she does admin and is about as much at risk as Donald Trump was during the Vietnam War.) Anyway, when she comes in each evening my first job is to fill her in on the latest celebrity death. Over the last month or so I’ve greeted her with the words: “Sean Connery’s died”, “Geoffrey Palmer’s died” and “Bobby Ball’s died”. Her response is usually a sad face or the words “I didn’t know he was still alive.” Two weeks ago I hit her up with the news, “Peter Sutcliffe’s dead” and her reply wasn’t one I was expecting. She said, “Ah! I know – I’ve just heard someone mention it on the bus.” That “Ah!” was very problematic for me. It’s the kind of suffix one would usually apply to the news that the friendly cat next door had died. I said, “Ah! What’s the ‘Ah!’ for?” She looked puzzled and then bellowed, “More cheese Gromit!” It didn’t take me long to realise she had mistook the brutal serial killer, Peter Sutcliffe, for Peter Sallis, the genial Last of the Summer Wine actor who also supplied the voice of Wallace, of Wallace & Gromit fame. I didn’t say anything but I did give an exasperated, Gromit-like stare to an imaginary camera.