A question for a pub or departmental water-cooler quiz.  What are the surnames of the famous people with these forename initials: GK; TS; JK; RD; PT; ee; DH; HG; JRR?  (See below for answers.)

And HRH?  Well, that’s me.  You can tell I’m not a physician because I have more initials before my surname than after.  Hugh Romain Honoré Gibbons MA.  No indoctrination for me.

Dad must have popped into pubs or libraries en route to the Registrar of Births.  My brother got Paul Réné Grinling; my sister, Noreen Deirdre – pronounced Bunny.  Mind you, Dad was Alfred Charles, always known as Dick.  Mum was Ilma: Queen Wilhelmina-Lite, apparently.

You can see nominogenetics is a fascinating field of study.

In my early days in pharma we had time to think and talk – and colleagues with a life beyond work.  I shared an office with a cartoonist - an expert in the origin of Nordic languages – and with the author of detective novels.  John and I were Phase 1 volunteers for Doug’s plots and characters.  “Is Harry Battery a manly sort of name for a detective?” “Sounds good - Zap Pow!” “How about Lance Strongarm?”  “Too contrived - on your bike.”

Those creative days give me an idea.  Around that time there was a popular TV series called The World of Gurney Slade – the protagonist being named after a village in rural North Somerset, near the evocative Midsomer Norton with its surprising spoil heap from local coal mines.)

Think on this.  Suppose pharma companies were to devote some of their R&D effort to discovering new names – which they could sell or license to imagination-challenged TV companies, novelists and dramatists?  Using company names and locations as molecules!   

GSK Brentford could be a plausible author of Anglo-American Non-ferrous Economic Strategies 1905-12.  General Sir Stockley Park chimes well - along with Gen Am.  You get the idea?  

Chilcott Warner and Compton Baxter are shoe-ins as US Senators.  Many Danish actors would kill to be Inspector Lund Beck or his keen Sergeant Milton.  Dr Leo Risborough has a princely ring.   

Mr, Mrs and Ms Dome-Hoddesdon for Kind Herts & Coronets?  Lily Basing in Upstairs Downstairs?  Lady Astrid Cazene (think about it) to be a cameo in Downton?   

Flying Officer “Fizzer” Tadley would be a dashing Battle of Britain type – alongside Captain “Squibby” Myers-Briggs (quite a personality!), a WW1 Ace in his Bristol Fighter.  Squire Chineham and Farmer Napp might fit Emmerdale.  

Some names would be pushing it; hunky oilman Janssen Wicombe and C&W star Beau Ringer; Eusibio Despond as a ‘tec visiting cells; Pollard Nightingale and sidekick Chalfont St Giles?  Hmmm. 

More exoticly, Nova Frimli might suit a sultry spy in a new Bond, close to M3.  San O’Phee and Ava Ventis could tempt in a remake of Father Ted – visited by the Abbott of Maidenhead.  Strawberry Bayeux and Serena Bedfont might be a boon for Mills &.

Whole works spring to mind.  How about the monk Br App in the Life of AB Pi?

(Now you’re being silly.  Madhu, Editor PP) 

Hey - Ed Pipi!  Buddy to – wait for it - Dr Whugh MA!