Phobias? It's all Greek to me

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. So said Franklin D Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States, in his Inaugural address to the nation.

Hmm . . . if FDR had been around today, he might have thought twice about that remark, especially if he'd clicked on to www. phobia.com, where he would have discovered that if something exists, there will be someone, somewhere who's afraid of it.

And whatever that fear is, it will have a name. Usually a very long name ending in 'phobia', from, of course, the Greek word for fear.

If even the word 'phobia' is enough to reduce you to a cold sweat, you may be suffering from Hellenologophobia, or a fear of Greek terms. (And no, 'kebabs wrapped in vine leaves with a bottle of retsina, please, Stavros' doesn't count.)

Then there's Phobophobia , a fear of, er, phobias. And while many better-known phobias can and do make the lives of those who suffer from them an abject misery, there are also a great many phobias which almost defy belief.

Just scrolling down the list of phobias at random reveals that there are people who harbour a genuine fear of chickens, those who are terrified by the Pope (any Pope, not just John Paul II), folk who are petrified by glass, men and women whose knees knock at the thought of... knees, people scared of beards, the Dutch, the bald and puppets.

Now most of us can empathise with a fear of dentists; the menacing whine of the drill, the very thought of prolonged probing among exposed nerves and teeth crumbling like condemned buildings is enough to make many of us squirm in our chairs and bring out the dentophobic in us all.

But you would surely need to be in possession of a psychiatric degree to understand dextrophobia - a condition the website describes as "a fear of objects at the right-hand side of the body." Eh?

If this is a joke, it's hard to see the point or the punchline.

How about Eisoptrophobia, defined as a fear of seeing oneself in a mirror? Again, there have been many mornings when this may seem entirely understandable to most people. But just as every action has a reaction, perhaps the opposite of Eisoptrophobia might be ChrisEvansphobia - a fear of not seeing yourself in The Mirror - or The Express, The Sun, The Daily Mail, etc. etc.

It's difficult to imagine that someone like Elizabeth Hurley could inspire a reign of terror, but among Venustraphobics, this would surely be the case. One sight of Hurley's lovely face would be enough to have those with a fear of beautiful women fleeing in panic.

Strange, but true.

As is Genuphobia - where the sight of a pair of knees of either sex, knobbly or otherwise, brings out the clammy palms in some folk.

These phobics are never, ever to be confused with Genophobics, who are scared of sex. Neither of them would be much use at a knees-up, that's for sure.

Moving swiftly along, Opthalmophobia might sound as if it entails a fear of people who fit or sell spectacles, but no - it transpires that this is a fear of being stared at.

Once again, it's direct opposite would appear to be ChrisEvansphobia - a morbid fear of not being stared at.

By the very nature of the place, Oxford is a place that you might conceivably expect to be full of Testophobics - incredible as it may seem, these are apparently people who are scared of tests, or exams. Fear of failing tests or exams yes - but the things themselves?

Still, it takes all kinds to relate to all kinds of phobias. One man's scary object is another woman's shrug of the shoulders.

Some people go into a very real blue funk at the thought of spiders - others keep them as pets and wouldn't be without them, either.

Finally, Germanophobia, it will not surprise you to learn, is a fear of all things German (and I can understand anyone being scared of having to sit through three hours of Wagner, for instance).

And yet it is a German proverb which, maybe, puts it all into some kind of phobic perspective:

"Fear of the wolf makes him bigger than he is."