What do you think the most important issue in our office is?

You’d think it’d be the pressing deadlines, getting the good stories and making up snappy headlines. You’d be wrong. It’s my name.

I make no apologies for being called David (it helps my Welsh asylum application anyway) but it means no end of confusion at the news desk. Mr Rutland, my colleague over at The Rhyl and Prestatyn Visitor, is also named after the country’s patron saint, so you can imagine the trouble it causes.

Every day even a slightly oblique reference has both of us wasting valuable time, wondering whether the person on the ‘phone wants the other David.

Not that I’m not used to it. My dad – David Simister senior – says he gave me my name because I popped into the world on St David's Day, 1986. And straight into a lifetime of never knowing whether people were asking for the gawky schoolchild or the civil servant.

They could have just called me Junior, but how stupid would that have sounded?

“Meet Junior. He’s….a junior”. Yeah, right!

So it goes with our office debate as to what my nickname should be, and I don’t care how new I am, I am NOT being called Junior.

One of my friends suggested I revive my nickname from high school, although I don’t think being dubbed “Simmy” would go down very well at council meetings.

I quite like the idea of going all Reservoir Dogs about it, and naming everyone in the office after a colour. Only – being the office’s only committed football non-fan – it’s inevitable I’d only be Mr Pink anyway.

“Mister Simister” sounds equally stupid, if only because having a rhyming nickname is just silly. I already have to suffer this phonetically-challenged tag at airports and dentist’s appointments, so I was rather hoping the office might be a place of refuge.

“Mr S”. That’s much better. Neat, quick, rolls off the tongue nicely. It’s just a shame nobody else in the office will ever use it.

I’ll get back to writing proper stories now…

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