A PRIVATELY educated lawyer keeps referring to his partner as ‘the missus’ as if he were a Cockney cab driver.
Nobody is sure why Martin Bishop, who holidays in Corsica and watches BBC4, believes it is appropriate to use the plebeian term to describe his partner Emma, a graphic designer.
Colleague Tom Logan said: “We were arranging drinks and Martin said ‘Better ask the missus,’ as if he were Syd James and his wife was a frosty old battleaxe with a tight grip on the purse strings.
“They’re not even married which is strange because you don’t go around describing people as things they clearly are not. I don’t call my wife ‘Sarah, the famous astronaut’.
“It implies he’s under the thumb of a censorious partner, but I’ve met her and she’s a handwringing Guardianista who would never dream of, in her words, ‘restricting Martin’s personal development space’.”
Bishop said: “Us fellas know you don’t want to get on the wrong side of the missus, because you’ll get a crack round the head with a rolling pin like in Andy Capp.
“Which isn’t quite Emma, but she can be quite terse when I forget to include halloumi in the Ocado order.”
