Time was, my name seemed fairly commonplace and easy to pronounce. Up in Yorkshire, in the Seventies, in the era of Regan and Carter of The Flying Squad, Ted Hughes and 'Mr Barraclough' off of 'Porridge' (you know the correct preposition for indicating actors in television programmes is 'off of', yes? For example, 'Sarah Michelle Gellar off of Buffy'; not to be confused with 'out of', which is preserved for pop stars, viz. 'Rachel Stevens out of S Club 7').

But lately my name seems to have metamorphosed into something exotic and enigmatic and hardly anybody gets it right. From the daily, understandable 'Barraclow' (the second syllable rhyming fully with the end of 'plough'), to some of the wilder manglings listed above, which I've heard in many phone calls and seen on several envelopes. I had a nice exchange with Kitchens Direct this week:

"Hello, is that Mr Barratt Close?"
"No, but that might be where he lives."
"Sorry?"
"Barratt Close."
"Yes, am I speaking to Mr Barratt Close."
"There's nobody of that name here I'm afraid."
"Oh, I think they've written it down badly here... may I speak to Mr Barraclow?"

I don't know if this is down to changing demographics or educational standards, and it amuses more than dismays, but this morning I checked to see if the details of a new anthology I'm helping to launch in January (Ask for It by Name from unfold press) had been uploaded onto Amazon.

Joy of joys, it was there! How satisfying and exciting. But hang on, what's this? Authors: Olivia Cole, Isobel Dixon, Luke Heeley, Liane Strauss, Roisin Tierney...so far, so good but who on earth is SIMON BARRACLOMAN? Sigh. And this means the ISBN number and bar code contain this impostor!

Ah well, all fixed now...supposedly anyway. Apparently 'Barraclough' is an unfamiliar name to the Indian data entry clerks who input ISBN details. Fair enough.  All this is a preamble to the story I really want to tell: the epic tale of Freddy Sword Car.

My friend Pete Ford's father is a veteran of the Korean War and was organising a trip back to see how things had changed since his service in the 50s. He called the Korean Embassy to ask for some brochures and tourist guides. No problem there, until he was asked to leave his contact details.

"Could I take your name and address please?"
"Certainly, it's Mr Ford."
"Ah, Mr Sword."
"No, Mr Ford."
Uncertainly: "Yes, Mr Ford."
"No, sorry, it's Ford, like the car."
"Ah," with increasing confidence. "Mr Sword Car."
"No, no, sorry, it's Ford with an 'f', like 'Freddy'."
With total assurance: "Okay, Mr Freddy Sword Car."

At this point Pete's dad hung up and I don't think his son believed the story until a week or so later when a package of brochures arrived for Mr Freddy Sword Car. 

PS: I've just found out that Mr Barraclough on Porridge may have actually been Mr 'Barrowclough'. There's no end to this... 

I have few rules in life but one that keeps me honest is Thou shalt not go to the theatre unless it's Shakespeare or Beckett. Despite some college dabbling with acting and directing (Beckett's 'Endgame', as it happens), cinema eventually triumphed over the theatre as my spectacular culture of choice.

Of course I lapse every once in a while and allow myself to be talked into seeing the latest Hare or Churchill or "the really amazing new Kabuki version of 'The Romans in Britain' being staged inside the south-westerly chimney of Battersea Power Station" but on the whole these have been mistakes: long, velour-gnawing, buttock-calcifying, unconsciousness-battling mistakes broken only by crowded, drinkless intervals that lengthen the agony on the rack of politeness.

But the brilliance of Shakespeare and Beckett (and there are only a couple of Becketts with intervals after all) brings out my usually dormant enthusiasm for the stage. So the other evening I found myself marching excitedly down Shaftesbury Avenue toward an evening at the Gielgud with Patrick Stewart's Macbeth and a production buried up to its waist, and then its neck, in praise. But things soon soured and had me wondering if my rule was, e'en so, a little too lenient.

My companion was late, so I shared the curb with a shivering man bearing a 'Golf Sale' banner. As time ticked by I began to envy the fact that he was actually being paid (albeit a pittance) to stand amid the gathering theatregoers. Then I noticed the sellotaped signs on the theatre doors: hastily printed and taped up signs are bad news in any context.

It seems Macbeth has laryngitis and, under the orders of his physician, cannot appear tonight ("Cure him of that!" I hear Macbeth shout.). Instead of Captain Picard ("Is this a phaser which I see before me? The kill setting towards my hand?"), we will have his understudy, Tim Treolar (no offence Tim, you did a good job).

It's at this point that some of my most fondly held 'Cinema versus Theatre' thoughts start to bubble up.

• When did you last sit down to watch 'The Godfather' only to be told that, due to glandular fever, the part of Michael Corleone will be played by (gulp) Jude Law?
• Have you ever been spat on by the characters in a film when sitting too near to the screen?
• Apart from 'Gone With the Wind' and 'Larry of Arabia', when is an interval in a film ever permissible or welcome?
• From Row V, the lit stage resembles a letter-boxed widescreen presentation, but you're really not going to be getting any close-ups are you?
• As annoying as cinemagoers can be (sucking nacho grease off their fingers one by one with the rapt attention of bomb disposal experts), theatregoers are just that little bit prouder of their bellowed opinions.
• Why are we paying £50 a seat to see a second-choice Macbeth when '30 Days of Night' at the Genesis Whitechapel only costs £6 and includes close-ups and the whole rich grammar of cinema?

My companion arrives, we take our seats, scene one begins and actually the evening is tremendous: imaginative, gripping, frightening, involving and, interestingly, highly filmic. I wouldn't be surprised if the talented director, Rupert Goold, is a fan of recent Asian horror cinema; Kubrick; De Palma and (well, Shakespeare is a populist writer after all) even Alan Parker.

I immediately vow to see more...Shakespeare and Beckett. It's just a shame that we didn't get to see Patrick Stewart's waxen head (borrowed from Madame Tussauds I hear) held aloft at the end; they haven't made one of Tim Treolar. Yet.