There We Are Then,

muppet: Most Useless Police Person Ever Trained. Generally used affectionately.

In the 1960s and 70s, female cabin crew were required to wear girdles, have weekly weigh-ins, and give up their job the moment they had children.

The first deadline, back in the 1800s, was a line drawn around a military prison, and any prisoner who dared to cross it was liable to be shot.

neck-down: any member of the stage crew who isn’t required to think, and simply takes orders from those above.

We may be hungrily embracing novelty in technology, but through language we are clinging on to the permanence of the past.

Some words are identical across different groups, but mean vastly different things: a bird’s ‘jizz’ is most certainly not the same as the one a chef slathers all over his chicken cacciatore.

The dynamic between the crew and its passengers is a curious one. Flight attendants essentially preside over a plane full of captives who for whole suspended hours are entirely at their mercy. But with power, as the cliché runs, goes responsibility, and keeping those captives both happy and docile can be a mammoth task.

Sir Thomas Beecham would have agreed. His verdict on the art became notorious: ‘Try everything once, except incest and Morris dancing.’