Mind your language | 6 March 2004

According to that very annoying programme Woman’s Hour (one minute being militantly gynaecological, the next giving recipes for butternut-squash soup), a mother complained to a school that allowed her son to say toilet instead of lavatory. A vox pop discovered more people in the street were at home with toilet than with lavatory, which one respondent identified as a word used only by those unfamiliar with English.