I HAVE organised a piss up in a brewery - our wedding reception was held in the Eldridge Pope brewery before it closed.

I've used the phrase 'cock up in a brothel' which is slightly less offensive and takes a while for some people to work out.

My mother had a disparaging phrase for men who insisted on wandering around with their flies undone. She'd look down and say 'well, dead birds don't fall out of nests'. When I had enough experience to realise what she meant, I had to be taken away to a darkened room and have a lie down.

A word that's in use in my office (I may well have introduced it) is knacky - a cross between knackered and tacky - used to describe an item that is less than pleasing to the eye and so kitsch as to be almost, but not quite, fashionable again.

LTS