Thanks to a chance conversation this evening between my daughter and one of her friends, specifically relating to girls with boy’s names, I was reminded of a radio programme my parents used to listen to when I was in my early teens that featured a couple who were amateur detectives. The wife was always referred to as “Steve”.
It took some racking of my brains to eventually dig out the information that the broadcasts were Paul Temple stories (they used the theme tune of Coronation Scot, which I could also remember, but not the name of the piece).
Having got that far it wasn’t too hard to find out that Steve was not some contraction or pet name used by Temple for his wife, but in fact her pen name as a journalist (Steve Trent). Her real name was apparently Louise. I never knew…