Walking down the hill with Milo this morning three successive people greeted me with big grins and hearty ‘Good mornings!’

I responded in like kind, even though I’d never seen any of them before in my life. Then it occurred to me that I probably had, and simply didn’t recognise them.

In case you think this is a manifestation of the early onset of Alzheimer’s, you are mistaken. I’ve always been like this. I find it hard to recognise people, let alone remember their names.

This is a handicap for someone who spent much of his life in publishing PR, but it also meant I flourished in environments such as the Frankfurt Book Fair, where everyone wore name labels. I was safe, confident, and impressive. Freed from the nagging worry of trying to recall who people were, I could relax and play my spiel.

You do learn to compensate. I could remember numbers, no problem. But with faces I had to come clean and ask people for forgiveness. At first it took the form of self-deprecation — “I’m sorry, I have this dreadful thing about names …” but as my charm lessened with age I had to come up with something less offensive and egotistical.

So I invented the term Nominal Dysphasia to describe my disability. People tutted and nodded seriously and sympathetically.

The other day I saw the phrase Nominal Dysphasia in print. Bloody hell, I thought, they’ve pinched my condition.

And indeed they have. I googled Nominal Dysphasia and got 1,300 hits. They all refer to a condition exactly like mine. Nothing reveals the origin of the term, but I made it up at least 25 years ago. Did it already exist then, and I unknowingly created it in parallel with someone else?

If not, can I lay claim to it and rechristen it Headley’s Syndrome?

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