Brian - yes I remember the term well. We had one on our nav course who was a chopped pilot and had already reached the dizzy rank of flight lieutenant. 2ANS insisted that student navs called all staff "sir", and so we had the crazy situation of this guy calling our maths instructor, a flying officer Education Officer "sir" - much to his amusement. At least this guy had a maths degree, which was a bit more relevant to the job than underwater basket weaving. Mind you he still got miffed when I regularly beat him in our frequent mental arithmetic tests. As he never failed to remind me arithmetic isn't maths, but I thought that was just sour grapes!