Charles Nevin: There's a sniggering part of England that is forever Colin Bell. End of story

So. A dangerous area, this. All of us can agree on the glorious variety and subtlety of the English language. Some of us delight in its almost infinite capacity for ambiguity. Fewer are unreserved fans of the burping, farting, raspberry-blowing naughty child of that ambiguity, the one that we use two French for: double entendre. Particularly tricky in print, too, without the winks and timing that make it an art. I'll show you what I mean. Man walks into bar and asks barmaid for a double entendre. So she gives him one. Not quite Miller, Morecambe, or even Monkhouse, put like that, is it? No, Missus. Thank you, Frankie, that's quite enough.

Actually, while we're on Morecambe, you might remember his running joke, the one that started, "There were these two old men sitting in deckchairs, and one said to the other..." and Ernie would always shush him before he could deliver the venerable DE, which involves the old man saying it's nice out and the other old man telling him to put it away.

Well, yes, I know what you mean, but that's the genius of the English music hall tradition, as developed by Morecambe and his writers: what, if we're really getting down to the Barthes and Foucault, might be described as a double entendre entendu, an understood double entendre. But then we know what Foucault knew about getting a laugh at a Glasgow Empire matinee. Yes, thank you, Eric.

All of which is a way of getting me to Colin Bell. Colin Bell, the former Manchester City and England footballer, unlikely subject last week of that most challenging of pre-breakfast experiences, a "light item" on the Today programme. The thing is this: in a poll of fans to decide which player should lend his name to a stand at City's new stadium, Bell won. And then the embarrassing implications were realised, so they decided to name it after Joe Mercer instead.

Sorry? The embarrassing implications? Well, it would have been The Bell End. Bell End? Low slang, vital organ, male, tip of. No, me neither, but then you're reading someone who spent much of his late teens trying to work out the Cockney rhyming slang, Hampton Wick.

Nevertheless, I feel it is time to declare myself. I like a bit of a snigger, it's the honest vulgarity today that I can't stand. Ask any grumpy old man. I would say that the snigger is the enemy of the pompous if it didn't sound quite so pompous. Now it's been explained to me, The Bell End seems quite a good joke, and worth keeping. And, if I might employ a phrase I don't often get the chance to employ, where will it all end? And what to do about Bristol City? Or Chester?

All right, all right, you are a sophisticated Independent on Sunday reader, interested in rather more important things than this sort of silly schoolboyish stuff. Very good, then: a test. Read one of my all time favourite headlines, and don't smile. Here we go, from a local newspaper, oh, some time ago now, concerning clerical objections to a contentious piece of planning close to the parish church. Ready? "Vicar Fights Erection In High Street."

Assuming anyone is still with me, I rush to agree that this reliance on sexual connotations is very British, symptomatic of all manner of repressions, and, eventually, tedious. Consider, then, another fine example of DE: the residents of a home for the elderly who petitioned for a change in the name of their road, St Peter's Close. I think I would find that rather comforting, myself; and contrast it with the experience of Mr Paul Allott, of Conisbrough, South Yorkshire, who has just moved, fed up with pizza delivery men and taxis refusing to call and numbers of people posing for snaps with their trousers down outside his home in Butt Hole Road. "I like a laugh, but it was beyond a joke," said Mr Allott. Indeed. Make mine a double.

Thank you, you've been a lovely audience. The only thing worrying me now is what they're going to do at Manchester City when they find out about a Mercer.