1: The name of John Cusack’s character in Grosse Point Blank.

I believe it was Lee and Herring’s Fist Of Fun (though it might be the Mary Whitehouse Experience Encyclopaedia) that made a long list of potential sitcoms with realistically banal premises. Such as Bird In The Hand about a man called Ian Hand whose day job was to dress up as a giant chicken with hilarious consequences. Or A Stitch In Time, featuring Ian Stitch as a clockmaker. Etc: playing on the not unusual habit of British sitcoms to name the show after an aphorism with the titular characters name in it.

And then John Cusack goes and makes a really rather decent black comedy about a hitman: Grosse Point Blank. Point Blank being a gritty late sixties film, and also a terminology used when shooting someone, Grosse Point being where it is set.

So why did they call Cusack’s lead Martin Blank? Bah!