And finally… Cornish bank beef

Between 300 and 400 people are fluent speakers of Cornish, according to Cornwall Council, while about 5,000 people are thought to have limited conversational ability.

It is believed that the language died out as a first language in the late 18th Century.

However, Roy Chubb accused the banking giant of being backwards after he tried to take the cheque to the Redruth branch but was told it could not be processed.

Mr Chubb, who is secretary of Cornish language group Agan Tavas, said bank staff knocked him back even after he explained to them the language has recognised status.

Lloyds defended its stance by saying that it can only accept cheques written in languages which its employees can understand.

Mr Chubb said other companies actively promoted Cornish because they saw economic advantage in doing so.

“At the same time it seems that Lloyds Bank is going backwards,” he said.

“The foundation of Lloyds Bank was the Welsh cattle-droving trade and, apparently, cheques can be accepted in Welsh and Scottish Gaelic so why not another recognised British language?”

A spokesperson for Lloyds said: “When processing a cheque our colleagues need to be able to understand the language it is written in, so they can review important details, which is key to preventing fraud.

“Whilst we respect the Cornish language and the efforts made to preserve and protect it, if a colleague is unable to speak Cornish, they will unfortunately be unable to process cheques in this language.”