Such nuances cause a headache for newspaper subeditors. At The Telegraph, we dash out “c–k” when referring to genitalia, but not when discussing barnyard fowl. Though birds of a feather flock together, a “c–k” is not a “cock”; we can print one but not the other.
It’s in “the digital space” that the real problems arise, Mycock tells me. “We live in a world of spam filters and profanity filters. I and others with sexualised names face what they call the ‘Scunthorpe’ problem.”
In his documentary, he interviews a John Smith (“the blandest of names”), and a Dr Cock. The latter – a lesbian, as it happens – says she has found her name “a wonderful icebreaker”. After all, she asks, “Who remembers the Smiths and Joneses they meet?”
Relentless bullying
We also hear from Mycock’s “long-suffering partner” of 25 years, Jenny Coates. She made it clear to him early on that if they married she would neither take his surname nor go double-barrelled (as Jenny Coates-Mycock).
The most interesting thread of the programme involves old friends pulling Mycock’s leg. “It’s relentless, even 30 years on, they cannot [hear] his surname without somebody making some sort of joke,” Coates says. “There was a point in time where all of the mick-taking from the friends round here started to really get to you,” she reminds him.
One of these friends recalls a long drive up to Scotland, “five blokes on the way to a boozy gig” cracking jokes about their mate’s name the whole way, to his growing discomfort. “I think I recognised that you stopped enjoying it, it just wasn’t funny any more,” one says, a little guiltily. Another interrupts: “What, stopped enjoying Mycock?”
Relentless bullying is – for many British men – the only way we have to show our friends we care about them. It was how the group had always bonded, a bunch of “middle-aged men with different responsibilities in the outside world together sharing the puerile joke…”
But now, by performing his comedy shows, Mycock has “reclaimed” the name. As one of his chums muses on the documentary, “You’ve taken ownership, haven’t you? And therefore it’s lost its power, it’s lost its teeth, it’s lost its intensity.” Another chips in: “It’s gone flaccid, really.”
Andy Mycock: Named, Unashamed is on Radio 4 on Sunday 19 April
