I am surprised just how po-faced most of the postings on this thread have been. On another thread I have been asked if I am a barrister. I am a solicitor. If a solicitor or a lay client asks a barrister in England to predict the outcome of an application or trial, the odds are strongly in favour of the answer "It all depends on the state of the judge's piles". It is an idiomatic if not humbly respectful phrase.

The assumption has been that I intended to say something personally hurtful. That assumption has been untrue. To be sure, I intended there to be a little sting in the phraseology. Was it not said in Sheridan's "School for Scandal" "The malice in a good thing is the barb that makes it stick"? All or most of you seem to have missed the point on this thread because you were too busy being schoolmarms.

There seems to have been a relatively sudden change to the tone of Gargoyle's postings. It may be material to know why, before leaping to condemn - or smother with love. Perhaps Gargoyle is playing a game. Perhaps it is a cyber version of "Knock down Ginger". Perhaps he thinks he is seeking truth by forcing us to look into the dark spaces where we do not wish to look. Perhaps there are other reasons. Some good friends of mine are subject to mood swings and are occasionally quite snappy. A couple of friends of mine are quick with the lip, and sometimes find with hindsight they have gone, verbally, too fast and too far. I compere and it can be a perilous line to walk between being funny and offensive - vide Chris Tarrant: compare some "shock-jocks".

I regret to say that there is a whiff of repressiveness here which I thought was alien to this forum. I see no great and compelling reason to treat the word "piles" as offensive, but even if I were wrong, or had posted under a misogynistic and unacceptable "Why is Gargoyle being such a ****" (and, sadly, I now censor myself when I refuse when singing shanties to bowdlerise the lyrics) it is surely not a strength of this forum to observe only the form and to refuse to see the content.

I rephrase. Does anyone know if there is anything wrong with or for Gargoyle? Have we checked before condemning? Remember the lady on the train. A young man, sitting opposite her, saw her fight to get her heavy bag off the luggage rack, as the train approached the station. "Could you pass mine down too?" he said. "Why, are you a cripple?" came her crushing rejoinder. "Actually, yes" he said, pointing to his crutches which she had overlooked.