If the whole Boaty McBoatface debacle proved anything, it’s that British people cannot be trusted to take anything seriously.
Not even actual serious things that deserve serious attention, such as potentially deadly storms. No, they had to try and take it too far again, didn’t they.
The start of this month marked the beginning of the new storm season with the Met Office and Met Eireann selecting 21 names to give to new storms - the idea behind naming them being to give the storms greater awareness, so that people know they’re coming and can prepare appropriately.
This year’s names are: Aileen, Brian, Caroline, Dylan, Eleanor, Fionn, Georgina, Hector, Iona, James, Karen, Larry, Maeve, Niall, Octavia, Paul, Rebecca, Simon, Tali, Victor and Winifred.
Before the first season that storms were named - October 2015 to September 2016 - the Met Office used social media to garner suggestions, with 10,000 submissions eventually coming in.
And, yes, you guessed it - a lot of them were completely stupid.
A Freedom of Information Request found that names that were discounted because they were not ‘proper’ names included:
Armegeddon
Apocalypse
Baldrick
BigBoss
Bilbo
BlackHeart
Bluetooth
branchwobbler
Cyclops
Dark Bloom
Excalibur
Freebooter
Forkbeard
Gale
Gnasher
Goliath
Goldeneye
Hades
Hammer
Holy Flying Circus
ForkBeard
Howitzer
Icy
In A Teacup(or Ena Tee Cup)
Jelbuoy
King Henry V
Hot Brew
Kraken
leaf shaker
leaf stripper
Lionheart
Maelstrom
Magneto
Megatron
Melbourne
Minatour
MrBrown
NastyBoy
Oblivion
Noddy
Poacher
Power
Poplar
Polaris
rootripper
QueenVictoria
Skylab
Smaug
Splasher
Stairrod
Stomp
Stormageddon
Sssweetcaroline
Swoosh
Tempest
Tetley
Thrasher
Thumper
Tiger
Torch
trunktrembler
Twizzle
Typhoon
Valkyrie
Vader
Voldemort
Wheatherwax
Wookie
Zebedee
Actually, now we’ve thought about it, how good would it have been to have Storm Megatron winding its way towards you?
And what nonsense about them not being proper names: King Henry V and Queen Victoria were definitely real people and those were their names. Poplar’s a place name too. I’ve been there. It’s one of the best bits of the Docklands Light Railway, that would have been great.
A missed opportunity, ‘The Met Office’, and we hope you’ll reconsider for next September.
(Image: iStock)