Mark Bridge

How many words in a minute? It's a question that appears to mix disparate disconnected units, like measuring an Olympic-sized swimming pool with double-decker buses or calculating the height of Nelson's Column in football pitches. Besides, there are also issues of size and speed - from the single syllable to the sesquipedalian, from relaxed to rushed. How many balls of string would it take to reach the moon? One, if it's long enough. As a child I was told that was one of the oldest recorded English language jokes - unless, of course, someone was having me on. Incidentally, your ball of string would only need to be a few metres across. Now that IS surprising. More recently, researchers have found a tenth-century double entendre in a poetry book at Exeter Cathedral. What's the punchline? And is double entendre hyphenated? We'll come back to those another time. Ultimately, any calculation can only be an average. Fortunately, I am an average man - although for copyright reasons I won't be quoting any of Rockwell'