David Crystal’s experience of the last thirty-six hours suggests that the British really are spelling obsessed, as SPELL IT OUT overtakes Nigellissima and Fifty Shades in the Amazon chart.

A 5-minute interview with James Naughtie on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme about his new book, Spell It Out: the Singular Story of English Spelling, led to an extraordinary outpouring, almost confessional at times, from listeners about their problems with spelling. And it all started at 7.20 in the morning.

At lunchtime, a ten minute interview on BBC Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine show was extended to half an hour, as texts, emails, and phone calls flooded in. Only the one o’clock news stopped it.

BBC News Online ran a piece about the new abbreviation Ebacc (for English baccalaureate). Crystal commented on the reaction that the abbreviation sounds like a disease: ‘I’m not surprised. New abbreviations inevitably echo their ancestors. For ‘e’, there are three chief echoes: e-coli, e-mail, and e-numbers. The first is fairly negative; the second fairly positive; and the third (for Europe) mixed. But as bac is already an abbreviation for bacillus, that’s the one most likely to come to mind. The association won’t last for long. Familiarity with abbreviations soon breeds content, and in a few months time, I predict, the medical associations will have been forgotten.’

The immediate visible impact of all this was the book shooting up Amazon’s top 100 bestseller chart. By the evening it was number four, ahead of Fifty Shades of Grey, and just behind Gordon Ramsay.

As Crystal said: ‘Maybe I should have called the book Fifty Shades of Grey, or is it Gray?: the Singular Story of English Spelling. Spelling competing with cooking and sex. Whoever would have thought it?’