Hello, hello; I seem to have cut off myself. So, and it's something that has always intrigued me and yet something to which I have never had a satisfactory answer; what is a

Kiwi fruit?

Quite simply, I suggest you go into a bar in Invercargill and, clutching your tube of Speights firmly for protection, ask the massed ranks of ram-castrating rugger buggers for a Kiwi Fruit. I can guarantee that you will learn pretty rapidly what it means, and you will probably learn a lot of other new words too.

In the same spirit, I was recently offered a Cornish Pasting, but had no time to spare and was forced to make my excuses. Would I have needed to bring my own wallpaper?

No, this is simply the process of tenderising meat in the preparation of a Cornish pasty. The word is also applied to the meat after it has been so treated. Some aficionados of meat products enjoy eating a Cornish pasting without the pastry of a pasty around it, and clearly this is what you were being offered. However, it can be an acquired taste as the meat hasn't yet been cooked.

Recently I heard an answerphone message in which the callee claimed to be busy Gluing the Green Envelope. What was really going on?

Darren, this is a political term. When those standing for a particular constituency do their junk mail distribution they have three distinct tasks. Firstly, the 'blues', who are virtually guaranteed to vote for 'the party', the 'reds', who are not, and the 'greens' who are most likely undecided (as opposed to being 'greenies'.) So, 'Gluing the Green Envelope' actually means sucking up to someone you don't know with the intent of influencing them to your way of thought.

Now, a young lady asked me this the other day and I was at a loss for words - in fact I was flabbergasted as I hadn't put the hard word at that time; help me please, what is a Dirty Line

One on which you cannot get a clean signal, meant either literally or metaphorically. A young lady so au fait with hacker slang sounds a valuable catch.

What goes on in the purple light district?