I’ve seen something in The Guardian that I’d like to share with you (just in case any of you have a political leaning away from leftie newspapers) and it’s about slang. We all use it. Some more than others. Personally, 90% of my language when talking is slang. Away from the written word, I’m completely incomprehensible. Anyway, you might be wondering what the hell this has got to do with the telly? Well, The English Project want to know your slang words for… well… just about everything. Bringing it back to the box, they’d love to know the various words you have for your remote control.

There’s a surprising amount of words for that little channel changer (that annoying people leave on top of the telly and thereby defeating it’s sole purpose). The project is looking for “Kitchen Table Lingo” – words that are used within a family, between colleagues or among specialists, but do not appear in any dictionary. Wanna know what people call the remote? Read over…

There’s a mindmelting amount of names for the humble remote control, varying from the common ‘the clicker’, ‘doofer’ and ‘zapper’ to the completely weird… like ‘doobly’, ‘podger’, ‘blipper’, ‘twitcher’ and ‘melly’.

My mum calls it ‘the oojimabob’ and my girlfriend’s folks call it ‘the buttons’. There are others who call it the ‘hoofer-doofer’ and the ‘onner-offer’ too. It only seems right that we give names to our controllers (there’s another one) as we spend so much time mauling them. Without even looking, I know mine has a crack along the top and a little door held together by tape thanks to some clumsiness. In fact, does anyone have a remote control that has a pristine, fully functioning little door thing? Anyway, if you have a name for the remote, then click here and send in your slang!