Bob's Yer Uncle

Well, we created quite a furor recently at the workplace.

You see, our newspaper, as part of a plan to become more...whatever, has opted to move all of our departments around in the same space as part of our attempts to become more modern and on-line or something or other.

So our sports department, also affectionately known by all the other reporters and editors as the toy department, has been moved from one side of our dreary office to the other.

But we have lost our little pod separation thingies, which never really gave us any privacy but which seemed to. I have a fairly loud, deep voice so whatever I said carried pretty much two miles anyway.

But now we have absolutely nothing separating us from our city and night desk operations, or from our on-line people or anything else.

I am facing directly towards a walkway, a mere foot away, where everyone comes and goes.

I hope to take pictures at some point, if I will not be shot doing so.

Suffice to say, however, that no one can pass by my desk without hearing me conduct interviews or, at the very least if I'm sitting doing nothing, being forced to catch the football I throw or the teasing remarks I toss at them.

And rather than wallow in despair at these inter-office developments, I have taken to harrassing our business department weenies right next to us as they conduct interviews with exceptionally boring bank executives.

I also have been throwing balls at the backs of the heads of our online staff and to the front reception desk females, most notably the beautiful Dianne, who loves kibitzing around with me in such merriment.

Or, if I can't do that, I simply tell them, "Bob's Yer Uncle."

And so I started wondering, 'Well, is Bob really Yer Uncle?" I have an uncle named Bob, so in my case, it's true: Bob IS Yer Uncle.

And me and my goofy friend, Homo Escapeons, whose real name is not Bob, say this to each other quite often.

But I wondered, statistically, if this common saying was really true.

In other words, does everyone have an uncle named Bob?

Being the inquisitive journalist I am, I set out to find the answer. And for the 5.8 fellow employees I surveyed, the majority had to admit that, yes, they did have an uncle named Bob.

I also recently asked this question in a blog post and of the few of you who responded to this serious query, I would say that yes, Bob's YER Uncle too.

My own Uncle Bob, in my experience, drinks like a fish and resembles an oak tree, about 6-feet and 3,000 pounds. He is bigger than life. If he sees this, I'm dead meat. I opted not to include a photo of him.

But the more I teased people by saying "Bob's Yer Uncle," the more I found out. There's a band named Bob's Yer Uncle, for example. Somewhere in the blogosphere is, in fact, a blog called Uncle Bob.

Having heard me flirt with her workmate Dianne about this important issue -- Dianne never catches the football when I throw it to her and when she threw it back to me recently she hit my boss in the head -- another front reception woman, Lynne, surprised me.

See, she also has duties in our newspaper library. So she went and fetched this from some obscure encyclopedia of modern culture or something or other...

"Bob's Your Uncle: Everything is perfect: c.p: from ca. 1890; slightly ob. 'You go and ask for the job -- and he remembers your name -- and Bob's your uncle.' 'Still going strong in Australia" (B.P., 1965).

So now, you're up to speed...and Bob's Yer Uncle.