What are the odds of me meeting a statistician like you?

Ah, so you’re a statistician, are you? I’d better be careful what I say, because you numbers chaps are a touchy lot and get frightfully het up if anyone misuses your data. So I promise I won’t tamper with your decimal points or put my foot in your percentages.

Great party, isn’t it? How many people would you say are here? Just a round number, a rough guess, a ballpark figure – or maybe I should say back-of-an-envelope. Which is the correct term? I bet you’ve got us all summed up already – average height, proportion of single women over 33, forecast of how many Pringles will be consumed in the next hour, distribution by social class. Not that class means much to me; it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other, as far as I’m concerned.

How much do you statisticians earn? Something a fair bit north of £150,000 would be my guess. Of course compiling all this stuff is definitely a growth industry. You must churn out literally billions of statistics every day. Gazillions of graphs. I’ve often wondered how many man-hours a year are spent just tabulating. Must be a goodly few.

Gosh. Not sure how many times my glass has been topped up this evening. Still, who’s counting? Silly question: I bet you are. What are the chances, eh? I mean what are the odds against you and me meeting like this for the first time at this party? You in the corner, wedged between the bookcase and the piano, and me sort of blocking your escape? I’d say it must be in the region of 25,000 to one. Or thereabouts.

Here’s an interesting statistic for you. Do you know you are the 11th statistician to punch me on the nose this week? That must be some kind of record.

Researchers at the University of York have produced a list of charming-sounding words that have slipped out of our language, but are still relevant to modern life and could be worth bringing back into circulation. They include “rouzy bouzy,” meaning boisterously drunk, “wlonk” for a haughty person, “losenger”, a flatterer, and “betrump”, to cheat.

As I am approaching an age at which I am also likely to fall into disuse, I thought I might indulge myself and compile my personal, arbitrary list of modern words in general use that we could well do without. They appear here in no particular order and are, of course, only a start:

Inappropriate, outreach, raunchy, unchy, affix (as in “affix stamp here”), unforeseen, duh, alight (as in getting off trains and buses), feedback, meltdown, helpdesk, toddler, hazard, uni, iconic, toxic, massive, celeb, obv, issues, empathy, stressed, interactive, tipping point, hammered and mouthfeel.

I am also working on a long list of two- and three-letter words which are still occasionally in use but certainly not in circulation, such as lum, et and umu. These are at various times brought out and claimed to be part of our language, but really exist only to clinch victory in some Scrabble tournament. This is a blatant example of betrumping.

Calling someone a back-seat driver must surely be the oldest and dreariest putdown in politics. It’s amazing it is still being bandied about

at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion and that people still talk about who is doing the steering. It ought to be possible to come up with more telling motoring metaphors for politicians to use when they want to get at each other. I offer this small selection: “Ca “Can’t think for himself. His satnav has mo more original ideas that he does.” “Sh “She doesn’t dip her headlights for anyon anyone.”

“Th “The minister has the habit of choos choosing to turn down the side road where he is most likely to meet a herd of cow cows.”

“Ne “Never in danger of exceeding the intelle intellectual speed limit.”

“Th “The Member for East Fosbury is the s sort of chap who can’t resist the disa disabled bay in Sainsbury’s car park.” ““You could say he regards a zeb zebra crossing as an uncalled-for pro provocation.”

“He’s very much on the hard shoulder in Cabinet.”

“He’s hands-free, but nobody’s going to call.”

“She is tooting her horn before the traffic light has turned to green.” (This might be appropriate for use against any minister named Amber.)