GADFLY.

(From The Northern Echo)

Byline: MIKE AMOS

HAD up to here? So were readers of last week's column, invited to punctuate "Smith where Jones had had had had had had had had had had had the examiners approval."

Lots wrote to prove that they could do it, wondering only if there were one or more examiners. Several recalled teasing the same conundrum half a century ago.

Barbara Brown from Darlington, who in Germany taught English as a foreign language, remembered quoting it to students who queried the standard use "had had".

"They were rather disorientated, " she says, though practice may have made pluperfect.

Earlier still, …