Kemi Badenoch, I can feel your pain. Nope, not the feeling of being knifed by a former colleague –but having your name mangled beyond recognition.

The Tory leader has pointed out, with admirable restraint, that ‘there’s no ‘bad’ in my name’

There is a particular kind of silence that arrives just before someone mispronounces your name – the flicker of hesitation, the calculation, the internal conflict over the decision to even attempt it. My name is Iram. It means garden in paradise (I know, right?), yet it’s hellish for some people to pronounce. It is short, phonetic, yet routinely transformed into Imran, Eye-ram, or some other curious innovation. In emails, I’m frequently misgendered altogether. ‘Dear Mr Ramzan,’ some correspondents have written. I once had an editor who insisted on calling me ‘i-raaam’, drawing the syllables out with exaggerated care.

That’s why recently, watching Robert Jenrick repeatedly mispronounce Kemi Badenoch’s surname at a Reform party press conference felt instantly familiar. It’s pronounced Bay-danoch. The Tory leader has previously pointed out, with admirable restraint, that ‘there’s no “bad” in my name’. It seems that Jenrick wasn’t listening. Asked in a Times Radio interview why he mispronounced Badenoch’s name, and if it was........

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