Sins of Omission

The Guardian illustrates a piece promising to give us an insight into how doctors' minds work (why on earth would anyone want to do that? I like tasteless humour as much as the next person, but really…) with several of the amusing, but derisory acronyms which doctors once used to catagorise their patients. At least they did so until such time until it was widely assumed that we would be shocked and insulted rather than amused by the fact that medics did not necessarily take a sunny view of human nature.

They're not new, these acronyms, and you may have heard some of the better ones before: PAFO (Pissed and Fell Over), NFN (Normal for Norfolk - this has also been appropriated by Nottinghamshire medics), FLK (Funny Looking Kid). The genius of these is that you know exactly what they mean.

So I'm sorry to see that the article missed one of the finest of these acronyms: GROLIES, which stands for "Guardian Reader of Low Intelligence in an Ethnic Skirt". Can't think why they overlooked that.