TIM BELFORD

What's your worst fear?

I've always had an unnatural fear of tunnels.

I say unnatural since a lot of people, including miners, don't seem to mind going into the ground at all.

And I have friends who are afraid of spiders and snakes and, in one case, mustard.

But I never realized just how many phobias there are out there until I picked up the latest issue of Time.

And they all have names.

Take for instance aichmophobia.

It's a perfectly justifiable fear of needles and other sharp objects.

Which is more than can be said of arachributyrophobia -- the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth.

One can be forgiven I suppose for having gerascophobia -- a fear of growing old -- but how do you explain wallooniphobia, which is a fear of half the population of Belgium.

Oh, they're all there.

Venustraphobia, the fear of beautiful women, phalacrophobia, the fear of baldness, and scriptophobia, the fear of writing in public.

Even lutraphobia which is the fear of otters.

I got to thinking, however, that there were a few missing from the list.

For instance, Municipal Affairs Minister Louise Harel obviously suffers from minipolisaphobia, a fear of small towns.

And Bernard Landry has a bad case of pedisinoraphobia - a fear of putting one's foot in one's mouth.

Then there's Jean Charest with praetermitteraphobia which is a fear of being ignored.

And Jean Chretien may or may not end up with a case of hospiceaphobia - a fear of inns.

And rumour has it that Public Security Minister Serge Menard has recently developed colloquiumamericanaphobia, which is a fear of a gathering of the Americas.

Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Joseph Facal meanwhile reputedly suffers from statusprovinciaphobia, which is an obvious fear of living in a province like all the others.

And of course there's Louise Beaudoin who, as everyone knows, suffers from acute polilinguaphobia - a fear of speaking more than one language.

So there you have it. Pick your own poison.

Placophobia - tombstones, linonophobia - string, genuphobia - knees, or maybe even zemmiphobia. which is an understandable fear of the great mole rat.

And if all else fails there's always phobophobia, the fear of phobias themselves.