Little wonder that most celebrated legendary figure of them all, the scourge of the Sheriff of Nottingham and the leader of Sherwood Forest's Merry Men, was called Robin".
The British foreign secretary William Hague will also join the Middle East diplomatic merry-go-round this week, with a visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories beginning on Thursday.
It was a fix by Unite's merry men in 2010 that stopped David, and we cannot have that again.
Other than depictions of the nativity, there is no work of art that has furnished society so comprehensively with what we now think of as Christmas: the generosity of spirit, the personal rebirth through reflection, the gaucheness and sentimentality, even saying "Merry Christmas" to one another.
In honour of Verdi's and Shakespeare's "globe of impurity", the magnificently gluttonous Sir John Falstaff (sung and acted with brilliant, gleeful energy and insight by Johanthan Veira), I enjoyed a San Miguel during act two's shenanigans, as Ford and the Merry Wives end up dumping Sir John in the Thames.
Warchus's appointment continues something of a theatre-boss merry-go-round with Rufus Norris taking over from Nicholas Hytner at the National Theatre this year and, last year, Gregory Doran succeeding Michael Boyd at the RSC, Vicky Featherstone succeeding Dominic Cooke at the Royal Court and Josie Rourke succeeding Michael Grandage at the Donmar Warehouse.
" Everything seemed to be as merry as a marriage-bell", added Cadogan, as Stalin went on about the benefits of the Soviet system.
On Christmas Eve 1940, during the blitz, he finished his programme: "Merry Christmas is somehow ill-timed and out of place, so I shall just use the current London phrase – so long and good luck".
But there was Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, and a wonderful children's newspaper, and a magazine called The Merry-Go‑Round that printed Walter de la Mare, Eleanor Farjeon, Laurence Binyon and other fine writers.
I was against Iraq from the start, never wanted a thing to do with it - and yet, thanks to Mr Bush and his merry band of neocons, there I am, there my country is, there my countrymen and women are, there our national integrity.
