Take a random selection of English tabloids and flip through them: you will soon notice that almost every other headline involves some kind of play on words – a pun, a double meaning, a deliberate jokey misspelling, a literary or historical reference, a clever neologism, an ironic put-down, a cunning rhyme or amusing alliteration, and so on. Yes, many of the puns are dreadful; much of the humour is laboured, vulgar or childish; the sexual innuendo is overdone; and the relentlessness of the wordplay can become tiresome after a while. You
