The old saying goes that we should not judge a man until we have walked a mile in his shoes. As with so much received wisdom – from judging books by their covers to the relative exchange rate for birds in hands and bushes – this is of course rubbish.

Nor Wits, nor Chronicles could ere containe, The Hell-deepe Reaches, of my soundlesse Braine.

2000, Danny McNeil, DC @ £100 - bollocks more like (on Internet newsgroup uk.games.video.dreamcast)

On the other side of the Atlantic, stores in Paris's chic Avenue Montaigne, a mecca for Japanese tourists, said that sales to foreigners had fallen sharply.