I offer today one of my occasional outbursts in print against expressions that have me, as with playwright Hanns Johst over the word ‘culture’, “[releasing] the safety on my Browning” — a quotation often misattributed to Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Goering or even (by David Starkey) Joseph Goebbels.

“What’s not to like?” is the phrase in question, and what’s not to like, of course, is the phrase itself, and some of the people who use it. It is a form of words popular with the folk you hear on Radio 2 contributing to phone-in shows or making a request for a dedication. Sometimes I think it is always the same person, a woman as it happens, the occupant of a world in which people are “loved to bits” and significant others (I know, I know) are “always there for me”.

This irritating creature is to be heard most days on ITV 3, asking “What’s not to like?” in plugs for the channel’s sponsor, The People’s Friend. These occur daily during the reruns of the nostalgic sixties police drama Heartbeat which, in my dotage, I have taken to watching.

Not so long back, Stephen Fry, whom I generally consider to be rather a good thing, asked “What’s not to like?” in one of his well-publicised ‘tweets’. Some people might have been able to supply a ready answer, since he was writing about photographs of naked oarsmen on a university rowing club’s fund-raising calendar.

I have another strong Radio 2 dislike in the use of the word ‘stuff’ for the creative output of musicians, actors and the like. Richard Allinson and Janice Long are chief offenders.