Historically I have struggled - at grammar that is. Until 2006. But then I decided nobody was going to publish a book written by somebody that didn't know their plurals from possessives, so I studied.

Fortunately as I began my study endeavors I was sitting next to the prophet during work hours. The prophet being a fountain of all knowledge. Nobody knows quite how he came by this knowledge because he seems to spend all his time sat at a desk - either at work or in the pub. But history has repeatedly shown he does have a grasp on many aspects of life and importantly for this conversation - grammar.

As such the foundations for my current understanding of grammar were laid one slow afternoon at work during the later months of 2006. During which the prophet kindly detailed the occasions when apostrophes should be applied to the written word. I subsequently went on to read several books on the subject as well.

It should also be noted at this point that I do not ordinarily watch weeknight TV. But the good lady priddeesh has a love for all things trash, especially when she has a OU essay deadline looming. Which is partly how I came to be watching the apprentice last night. There are a whole bunch of other complicated reasons which I will not bore you with.

The episode I watched was number six of the current season, in which the two teams were tasked with coming up with an idea for a new greetings card in an already saturated market. The reason I am writing this blog is because one of the teams came upon the idea of a 'national singles day'. And therein lay the problem.

During the task the team spent almost four hours trying to work out whether there should be an apostrophe in or around or after the word: singles. Which has subsequently sparked a fairly interesting debate, in fairly small circles. To the point that in the subsequent show hosted by Adrian Chiles 'The apprentice: You're fired.' They had the head of buying for Clinton Cards state that the apostrophe must go before the closing 's' I.e. single's

So here we come to the crux of this post - the application of my sum knowledge regarding the need for an apostrophe: you don't need one. Here is why:

Singles is plural. It is not possessive. It is talking about a collection of single people: plural. You could argue that the statement is possessive because it is referring to a day for singles and therefore possessed by them. But that is stretching the point to levels of stupidity for my mind. One which now seems to be debated by several Universities renowned for their standing in the field of English language. Who do not seem to agree with each other. Even the Editorial staff at the 'Times' struggled!

For me the rule of thumb is: if the path is not obvious and you have conflicting rules keep it simple. Here I don't see any fine line. It's a bunch of single people. It's a bloody plural.

I wonder whether I will hear from the prophet.

PS What a plonker Kevin was. And how shocking to see the white alpha males gang up on the last Asian girl: Sara Dhada, with no substantive evidence for their arguements. They didn't even work with her on that task. She will go because she doesn't stand up for herself but I think not before Lee and Alex, hopefully.