I don’t get it. Is Schoof a play on words or something?

cosmictanya wrote:

I don’t get it. Is Schoof a play on words or something?

I tried to find something, but I couldn't quite. It's just a funny name though.

I don’t see the joke with the whole name. Schoof. What’s Schoof?

You do need a surname that adds to it. Or a Famous Five situation. I used to love the Famous Five, always insisted on the videos from the library, and my mother (our phone was on the kitchen wall, so that’s where she spent most of her waking moments) used to shout down to the street things like ‘We’re watching Dick and Fanny up here’ - as we lived in Soho and it was always busy, a cheer would go up. Used to annoy me. Once we ended up with four people piling up the stairs in excitement, to find 8/9 year old me watching the Famous Five and tutting at them for disturbing me.

I gave up trying to find any further innuendo in the name. I just like that the Netherlands' new PM is called Dick Schoof, a new name to get used to on the European/world stage.

Actually, if it was pronounced "Dick Sho-off" then that might be a bit more interesting.

But I presume it's either "Shoof" or "Skoof".

There used to be a politician from one of the Benelux countries called Jacques Poos.

Though of course that doesn't mean anything over there. It's like having an English politician called James Caca.

Butterfield wrote:

Actually, if it was pronounced "Dick Sho-off" then that might be a bit more interesting.

But I presume it's either "Shoof" or "Skoof".

Yes, we need to determine whether it’s shoo or schoo before we play around with it properly.

If the latter, then we’re only one letter out from Dick School, which is potentially spectacular.