Just quickly following up on a couple of things . . . King Juan Carlos is said to have even importuned Princess Diana. And Mr Romney's first name is, in fact, William. So he actually choses to favour his second name, Mitt.

I saw something odd today. A chap in his sixties was walking along both sides of the street and hauling the recently-emptied bins off the pavement and back into peoples' drives. A vigilante bin remover. Very anal.

Here are the names of several Spanish celebrities, followed by their English equivalents.

- Placido Domingo, Victoria de los Ángeles, José Carreras, Reyes de Luna, Paco de Lucia, Camerón de la Isla, José Luis Zapatero, Julio Iglesias.

- Quiet Sunday, Victory of the Angels, Joe Careers, Kings of the Moon, Lucy’s Frank, The Island’s Shellfish, Joe Louis Shoemaker, July Churches…

As Anthony Steyning says in an IberoSphere article . . . Unreal and I don’t know of many languages in which famous names, in translation, become so . . . surreal.

I would guess that, like me, you've had a slew of spam emails beginning Hi there How are you doing? I love your user profile. Are you interested to check my own private images? But I bet you haven't had one that clearly caters for Yorkshire argot and begins

Eh up! How are you doing? etc. Isn't the internet wonderful?

Finally . . . . The Spanish economy shrank in the final quarter of last year and is expected to contract further during the whole of this year. If you want a short and simple commentary on this, click here. If you want something long and complex, click here.