Words In Papers, Words In Books

Words On TV, Words For Crooks*

It all started last night ..... Andrew 'Brillo Pad' Neill appeared on the telly on a programme called 'Today at Conference' a phrase that they used ad nauseum in their poncy intro ... its a phrase I heard repeatedly last week when the red lot had their big meeting in the Big M. 'Nick Robinson reporting from Conference'. It got my back up then and it does now. Where's the bloody THE???

Anyway, for no obvious reason all these other things that annoy me have been spring into ma heid since then, so always one to share .....

'In resort' .... favoured by holiday brochures and poorly educated holiday reps who know less about the place your going to than you do. For example, "Welcome to Turkey, thank you for travelling with Dicksplash Tours, we'll be travelling down to blah blah now and when we get in resort ..." It's 'In THE resort'.

'Carnival' - formerly and PROPERLY known as the Notting Hill Carnival. OK, I'll let you lose the Notting Hill bit but it's still THE THE THE THE THE carnival, or at the very least A carnival. Not that I give a stuff about it as I've never been!!

'On Message' - nope

On a business front, when a Powerpoint presentation is referred to as 'the deck' - I think it's an American thing? - and when people 'speak to' the 'deck'. Stop it.

'Strictly' - a luvvie abbreviation that annoys me as much as when someone says "when I left 'enders" WTF????

There will be more ....

On a postive note, I was listening to Richard 'blithering eejit' Madeley this morning as I drove to work. He played 'Perfect Day' the comic relief version with 29 people on it .... I looked round to see the drivers behind and to the sides of me - and me - singing along to the bit where Dr John goes 'Oh such a POYfect day' ... we all realised what we were doing at that point and smiled. Lovely.


EDIT: Just remembered a cracker 'Let's reverse reality' ... used by people at work to mean 'let's tell a lie to make what we want happen'.

Wordy Rappinghood, TomTomClub, 1981