>I'm afraid the "eye" is a N. American thing only :-) like EYE-ran, EYE-raq. But I think Tony Blair has been listening to his ally so much lately that the other day, on a news interview, I swear I heard HIM say EYE-raq, or somewhere in between the two, like IR-raq.

I think I've heard Blair once, a couple of years ago, say "nucular". Can't be sure, my memory refresh cycle is known to skip a few.

And, ah, during the State of the Nation - my TV shows the locked up captions by default, and each time the word "nucular" came up, the stenographer was delayed a couple of seconds, probably deleting what he typed and correcting it to the "nuclear". About third time around he also got it right (or wrong, but grammatically correct), well, almost: "nucular weapon" became "nuclear woman" :).

Morale of the story: a stenographer can lie for you, but can't help leaving subtle hints.