Pligget

What's in a name?

I have three names.

For the first 40 years of my life, I was known as Tim to everyone apart from my mum and dad, who insisted on calling me Timothy...
When I was a kid I never managed to acquire a nickname, but that's probably just as well. At school most nicknames sounded straight out of "Jennings", and were all pretty scathing - Tich, Urn, that sort of thing.

Even my two sons don't call me Dad - from day one they've both called me Tim, presumably because everyone else did, and that's fine by me.

Recently though, I've acquired two other names - one at work, one at home. At work, I'm an honorary member of the Gentlemen's Dining Society - an elaborate cover-name for a group of ex-(but still want to be)students who are old enough to know better, but still think it's cool to go out once a month, get hammered and murder a curry. The default outing is the CCTV night, which stands for Club, Chequers, Taj, Vomit. You get the picture.
Within the hallowed walls of the GDS I'm known as Jelly - an abbreviation of Jelly Head - a character in Viz comic who had a lime jelly in place of her brain and who, though lying completely inert on the ground, managed to foil a robbery and capture the robbers. Can't think why they chose that for me. Oh, and just in case you were burning with misplaced curiosity, the other GDS members are: Shep, Pilch, Spoon, Large, Doug, and Badger. Sadly Dr. Bollocks is no longer with us...

My other nickname is Pligget - hence the name of this blog. Over the last 6 years or so, I've been involved in a number of experimental theatre projects in Cambridge - mostly for the cunningly named Cambridge Experimental Theatre group. In the early days I took part in an acting workshop where one of the exercises was to introduce ourselves to the group and relate a funny anecdote - all in nonsense language. Apparently I introduced myself as "Pligget", in a vaguely Estonian-sounding accent, and went on to tell a story that had everyone in fits - I wish I knew what it was about. The name has stuck - even to the extent that it appeared as my credit in the programme for the last show. So I have a stage name. Somehow it doesn't have the same zing as "Prince" or "Sting" or "The Edge", but then I'm not a pretentious twat... yet.

So, for the record, my formal name is Pligget Troezersnaek, but you can call me Plig.