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(Picture: Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images
Starved for conversation with a friend of a friend I’d rather awkwardly been left to talk to while our mutual went to the bar the other Friday night, I decided to ask:
So, you know that thing you use to change the television channel? What do you call it?
Then came a reply I could never have predicted:
The doofler.
From that moment on it became my mission to find out what all my friends, colleagues and acquaintances called the remote.
I even kept a note in my iPhone.
But, after one respondent said ‘woozer’...
.... and another ‘the archie’...
… I reluctantly turned to google and discovered we apparently have 50 different names for the remote control in the UK.
According to a 2013 survey of 1,000 people by the critically acclaimed NetVouchercodes.co.uk these are the most-widely used names for the switcher:
The remote
The flipper
The doo-dar
The clicker
The switcher
The dooberry
The dangle
The thing
The thingy
The whajamacallit
The thingymajiggy
The hopper
The stick
The do-for
The foogangle
The flapper
The remote control
The controller
The zapper
The whatsit
The dingle
The clacker
The wand
The yeti
The changer
The thingmajig
The blaster
The zipper
The dongle
The blibber
The black box
The melly
The plonker
The didge
The buttons
The ‘mote
The trolls
The hoofer-doofer
The flicky
The doflicky
The onner-offer
The hum dinger
The gizmo
The tuner
The converter
The binky
The infer
The oojimeflip
Trevor
What's more, there seems to be a legitimate north/south divide when it comes to what we call that thing which changes the channel.
From my huge pool of around 31 people - approximately 40 per cent of which were from north of Birmingham - those hailing from the south were more likely to say 'remote', and those from the north were dead set on the 'zapper'.
One friend called it the Dave, but I guess the less said about that the better.
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