I'll vote for misuse of apostrophes, and second Karen's observation of over-friendly staff. Here in the states, "St. Patrick's" is often rendered as "St. Paddy's" (I'm sure it's simply because it rolls off the tongue more easily), but I've never seen "St. Patty's."

Now, on this handbrake thing--it is largely a matter of where you learn to drive. In the U.S., it is usually called the parking brake or the emergency brake. In many cars here it is operated by a pedal, and is thus not a handbrake. Using this brake to assist in taking off at the bottom of a hill is not routinely taught, except perhaps in very hilly places like San Francisco, and most Americans have never heard of the technique. (As previously mentioned, it obviously applies only to a manual transmission[gearbox].) While it's possible to do it with a pedal-operated parking brake, it's much trickier than doing so with a handbrake. Given that the majority of cars here have automatic transmissions and a significant percentage of manual-trans cars have pedal parking brakes, there's not much interest in using the parking brake to assist in hill starts.

Some tidbits:

Subaru had (maybe still has) a feature called a "hill holder," which automatically retained pressure in the brake lines when the clutch pedal was depressed. This accomplished the same thing as the hill start technique with most drivers being blissfully unaware of its existence.

"Parking brake" refers to the wisdom of applying it when parking the car, especially with a manual trans. Even with an automatic trans, it can help avoid stressing the internal shift linkage of the transmission if it's applied before shifting into park. "Emergency brake" refers to the fact that because it is a manual way to apply the brakes, it can be helpful if the regular brake system, which is hydraulically operated, fails. It's largely a misnomer, though, as it's of very limited use. The emergency/parking brake only operates on two wheels, usually the rear (which generally provide about 1/3 of the car's total braking capability), and modern cars seldom experience total failure of the regular brakes due to split braking systems.

Most cars with rear disc (as opposed to rear drum) brakes have the parking brake mechanism inside the rear brake caliper. If the parking brake is not used--and it's a typical American habit to not use it--the rear brakes will not self-adjust properly and often the caliper will seize internally. Non-use also makes it more likely for the operating cables to seize. Then when the parking/emergency brake is eventually applied, either it doesn't work at all or it goes on but won't let itself off.