Alexa, can you remind me of your name again, please

ALEXA, I’m not feeling well. My back aches and my head hurts. What should I do?

Alexa is not the name of my GP, it’s the name of the little Amazon Echo device which many people now have in their homes. It’s great for playing music, helping you make to-do lists and get the weather forecast – all via voice commands.

You can also ask it questions from which the answers are drawn from the most popular sites on the web.

This week the NHS announced it had teamed up with Amazon so that all health advice given via Alexa devices will come from the NHS, rather than the current medley of popular responses.

One reason behind the move is to make it easier for vulnerable patients, such as the elderly or those with visual impairment, who struggle to access the internet via traditional means.

So next time your old gran says she needs medical advice but isn’t sure about bothering her GP, will she be asking Alexa instead?

Before you all fall about laughing, I have to tell you that my 82-year-old mum is now the proud owner of her own Alexa.

Well, actually, it’s my Alexa, purchased and installed at my mum’s retirement flat in a moment of madness (two hours of downloading and swearing to be more precise).

The purchase can be blamed entirely on the futuristic BBC drama Years and Years, where grandma Muriel Deacon – masterfully portrayed by Anne Reid – keeps in touch with her family via Alexa, even summoning them to attend a family conference call.

But there’s TV drama and then there’s the reality of persuading a polite, slightly deaf older lady to speak in the authoritative manner required to get Alexa working properly.

After spending a morning extracting the various passwords she needed to install the Alexa app on her mobile phone and sync it with the wifi we were ready to go. I’d also bought an add-on device which allows those who still have a landline to make and receive calls via Alexa. I thought it would be a nice way for her to keep in touch with her old friends.

That device has also been plugged in and was flashing happily in the anticipation of someone, hopefully not a scammer, making a call.

So what’s the problem you ask? Well, to start, like many older people, my mother has a bit of a problem with names.

Thankfully my husband is called John which is the same as my dad’s name and makes it easy for my mum to get his name right.

But she has a tendency to call my sister’s husband by her ex-partner’s name, with the toe-curling embarrassment that goes with that particular faux-pas. My mum also has a great granddaughter called Alexia. The rest of us call Alexia Lexi but my mother insists on using her proper name.

And Alexia is also the name which comes out of her mouth when she tries to command Alexa. “Please Alexia, answer that phone call,” she mumbles.

I point out that she’s going to have to speak up, drop the please and remember it’s Alexa, not Alexia.

After a discussion about the lack of “please and thank you” in modern society mother finally manages to answer and terminate a call. But she turns to me, looking a bit baffled and asks: “Why can’t I just text people?” “Alexa, how do you cure a really big headache?”