If you tweeted about a particular snooker referee being the ex-boyfriend of one of the women in The Human League, and a friend of yours replied with ‘Don’t cue want me baby?’, how would you react? Would you groan, sneer and dismiss the pun as the lowest form of wit? Or would you – like me – laugh out loud and feel a surge of joy at the beauty of the wordplay? If the latter, come and stand with me in defence of puns. Not in a ‘guilty pleasure’ way, either, but as a proud statement that puns are wonderful and important.

Dubai is a city built on sand

The intifada has arrived in London

Keir Starmer’s gentlest grilling yet

I hate the snobbery that surrounds puns, the way they’re seen as second-rate language. A good pun – be it a joke, a newspaper headline or simply thrown into conversation – is everything language should be about. It’s concise, it’s economical, it’s effective. It can be a striking and memorable way of getting your point across. And even if it’s there just to raise a chuckle, the skill in its construction is something to admire.

A lot depends on context. Shakespeare is allowed to do puns because he’s Shakespeare. When he writes, ‘made glorious summer by this son of York’, people nod approvingly. When a camping shop announces a January sale with ‘now is the winter of our discount tents’, people lift their eyes to the heavens. Maybe it’s because humour is seen as trivial, as though the things we........

© The Spectator