Oh, look, how sweet. Now I’m the eminence violette et rose.

What's the matter, Jason? You're looking a little stiff today.

Jason Micallef is on Super One’s Kalamita right now, discussing me without mentioning my name (as usual). If they were educated enough to know where the expression eminence grise comes from, I would by now be the eminence violette et rose in their new John Grisham novel.

But they’re straight from the gutter and think that pulling yourself up by your bootstraps means nothing more than fashioning your outfits on David Beckham and making enough money to buy the wrong sort of things. And so the mysterious and shadowy Daphne who is anything but, and whose name we are not allowed to mention because she’s a Black Witch, becomes:

Dik
Certu Mara
Dik
Certu Blokker
Dik
Certu wahda li tikteb fil-gazzetti

Jason has just said that the mysterious woman whose name hasn’t been mentioned once so far despite the intense discussion about her – their audience is supposed to know who I am by osmosis, like when the priest talks about the Holy Spirit – has a pinna kattiva.

Hmmmm. Fascinating. Mean and nasty recipes, eh? I suppose this gives new meaning to the phrase “she cooks a mean roast”.

As for the pen – boy, what a Luddite. I don’t think I’ve used a pen to write anything except bread-and-butter letters and university exams since I left school. I’ve touch-typed since the age of 15.

But do you know what I’ve come to think the real problem is with this business of never mentioning my name? It has far too many syllables, putting up scope for ‘see shells she sells on the shea sore’ type of accidents. And it has far too many of those dangerous consonants which certain sorts of Maltese speakers slip over and swap around: n, l and r.

And this is the very worst bit: my first name has a flat ‘a’, a vowel sound which doesn’t exist in Maltese and which is unpronounceable by people who grew up speaking only that language. Vowel sounds are learned only in childhood or never at all. The most you can hope for after childhood is a close approximation.

They never say my name because they can’t pronounce it and they know I will laugh at them.

And that would be a right killer: being laughed at by a pink and violet eminence.