Making a hames of James? Just call him J-Rod

Troubling times — a new international superstar and nobody’s sure what to call him.

As you might expect, George Hamilton — who gave us Jan Molbu long before linguistic accuracy was fashionable — is mainly affording James Rodriguez the ‘Ham-ez’ pronunciation of his name, apart from the odd slip. On BBC, Steve Wilson more or less apologised to viewers for following suit. But on ITV, Clive Tyldesley stubbornly refuses to make a hames of James, while Adrian Chiles offered a half-hearted attempt to placate John Foreigner, grudgingly admitting: “I think he calls himself ‘Ham-ez’,” as if it was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard.

A fresh complication too, in ITV’s defence. Word emerges that Rodriguez’s father actually called him after James Bond.