Broadcast as it was three days after the results of a much-publicised survey into modern regional identity, nothing could have been more timely than Paul Farley’s enquiry into the roots and varieties of Merseyside demotic (28 March). Or, as it turned out, more problematic, for no sooner had Farley greeted some of his distinguished guests – these included the poet Roger McGough, the journalist Gillian Reynolds and the actor Michael Angelis – than the thorniest linguistic and geographical difficulties began to present themselves.Could Scouse dialect be found all along the banks of Mersey or was it exclusively Liverpudlian? And what about the word itself? Academics were able to demonstrate that it derives from the word “lobscouse”, a kind of gruel fed to eightee