A FEW weeks ago I mentioned how much I’ve always disliked my name.

Now it seems I could be lucky, at least if I ever want a holiday in Pontins.

In a bid to keep out Gyspies and Travellers, the company proposed to refuse or cancel bookings from people with Irish accents or certain Irish surnames – as if everyone in Ireland was a Gypsy or Traveller.

Staff were told to turn away any would-be holidaymakers who were called Boyle, Connors, Doherty, Gallagher, McGuiness, Murphy, Nolan, O’Donnell or O’Reilly, among many other Irish surnames.

My name, I’m told, is Norman French in origin but arrived in Belfast via a great- grandfather from Liverpool who went to work there in 1912, married a local girl and stayed.

I’ve often wondered whether the fact that I’m one-eighth Scouser accounts for my fondness for The Beatles.

But it means I could evade the ban. If I wanted to visit Pontins I could state my name truthfully and assume a fake accent – and they’d never know that they’d let a Northern Irishman in.

The racial prejudice in this policy is not as overt as those signs in boarding house windows of the 1950s that stated: “No Irish, no Blacks.” But it’s not a million miles from it.

It’s not just deeply offensive. It’s also incredibly stupid.

Only recently Pontins had lobbied Conor McGinn, the Labour MP for St Helens North, to support the re-opening of their sites. And yet he and his family would have been refused admission – because the name McGinn in on the banned list. That’s gratitude for you.

Other prohibited names included Cash, Lee, Stokes and Ward, none of which struck me as particularly Irish.

I’ve known the odd Boyle, Doherty, Gallagher and Nolan in my time and none of them were Gypsies.

Would Eddie Murphy, Noel Gallagher and Coleen Nolan be refused admission, while I walked past them all?

It goes to show, yet again, that everyone comes from somewhere else if you go back far enough – including those central European immigrants to Britain, the Anglo-Saxons.

It also points out the folly of trying to guess someone’s race, background or identity from their surname alone.

Most Irish names are associated with Catholics. McGuinness is sometimes spelt Maginnis, and it was the name of a former MP, Ken Maginnis.

Yet he was an Ulster unionist, a Protestant and one of those Northern Irish people who would see themselves first and foremost as British.

Other Protestant unionist politicians have had Irish names like Danny Kennedy, Harold McCusker and Terence O’Neill, and a notorious Protestant terrorist was called Lenny Murphy. Pontins could well have guessed them wrongly.

And on the Catholic, nationalist side there are Gerry Adams and Danny Morrison, both names that arrived with the Plantation of Ulster by Scottish Protestants.

Adam’s successor as Sinn Féin leader is Mary Lou McDonald, who shares a surname not just with the Old McDonald who had a farm, but with many an Ulster Protestant.

And no-one would have guessed that anyone with an unexceptional English name like Bobby Sands was a Catholic if he hadn’t led the hunger strike by IRA prisoners in 1981.

I don’t necessarily blame Pontins for wanting to exclude Gypsies and Travellers, even if the surname and accent identification approach was badly flawed.

Prejudice against Gypsies and Travellers extends into wider society, on both sides of the Irish Sea. A 2017 survey found that only nine per cent of Irish people would be happy to accept one into their extended family.

And if the company believe they will cause trouble or leave a mess behind then they are within their rights to refuse them entry.

Yet if Pontins came to Cumbria in early June most years they may be pleasantly surprised.

It may not happen this summer but under pandemic-free circumstances an estimated 30,000 people descend upon Appleby-in-Westmorland for the annual Appleby Horse Fair.

There are thousands of Gypsies, Travellers and visitors and most shops and pubs in the town do very well from it.

There are sometimes a few arrests, but as a Gypsy representative once told me, there’s usually no more trouble than there would be in Botchergate on average Saturday night. The police agree.

The Gypsies and Travellers clean the site afterwards, leaving few traces they were ever there.

The Britannia Hotel Group, which owns Pontins, have agreed to drop the discriminatory practice. They may still choose to exclude Gypsies, and that’s their right.

But it’s absurd to turn anyone away based on a guess about their background.