War Of The Words

It’s 7am, it’s darker than it should be for this hour in early June, it’s raining, and the temperature hasn’t reached 16°C yet. A couple of days ago it was over 30°C and brilliant sunshine – no wonder we Brits talk about the weather a lot, there’s always a lot of weather to talk about. It also explains why, despite the disbelief of many Americans, we don’t really need to bother with air-conditioning in the UK.

 

If it wasn’t for the weather, I guess we’d be talking about the BBC even more than we do already. The BBC is variously, too woke, too left-wing, or too right wing, and the licence fee should definitely be abolished (or not).

 

Nigel Farage is platformed too much – or not enough (according to Farage himself, who would abolish the licence fee purely on the grounds that he hasn’t been invited on Desert Island Discs yet). I suggest that perhaps the BBC invite Mr Farage onto Desert Island Discs, but with usual presenter Lauren Laverne replaced by Victoria Derbyshire, who can quiz him on his £5m pound donation from Christopher Harbourne and his house in Clacton between his musical selections.

 

In a similar vein, Restore Britain – the one-man band political party that is Rupert Lowe following his split from Reform – would defund the BBC in the unlikely event of him forming a government because he took exception to jokes about him and Elon Musk made on Have I Got News For You.

But these are mere trifles. The BBC’s biggest failing is, I’m sorry to say, the decline in their radio comedy output, especially radio sit-coms. I grew up listening to shows like Hancock’s Half Hour, The Navy Lark, The Clitheroe Kid, and The Al Read Show. In more recent times I’ve enjoyed programmes like Clare In The Community; Alone; Welcome To Our Village, Please Invade Carefully; Double Science, Reluctant Persuaders, and more, many of which I’ve not only listened to on the BBC Sounds app, but have been to see being recorded.

 

Sadly, there’s now a dearth of new sit-coms on Radio 4, where the comedy output seems to consist mostly of sketch shows in which the content is to a large extent, created by the listeners themselves, and panel shows – some quizzes, some not. To my ear, many of these shows are unfunny and self-indulgent (other listeners may disagree, but that’s my opinion and the only one that counts). Recently however, I’ve been to see the recordings of a couple of these shows and, while they might not quite reach the lofty standards of BBC comedy output in years gone by, they were at least funnier and more engaging than I had expected.

 

Best Medicine is a panel show hosted by comedian Kiri Pritchard-McLean. In each show the guests have to make a case for what they think is the ‘best medicine,’ which could be anything from a groundbreaking treatment or invention to something as simple as a state of mind. The two recordings I saw were funny and informative, but a problem with this type of largely unscripted show is that while the recording runs to over an hour, they have to be edited down to the 29 minutes that ends up being broadcast, losing some of the vitality of the original in the process.

 

Another show I’ve recently seen recorded is Unspeakable, hosted by Phil Wang and Susie Dent. Guests – who included Mark Steel, Cariad Lloyd, and John Culshaw in the recordings I saw – suggest new words for the Unspeakable Dictionary. Mark Steel’s rant about ‘nonouncements,’ – for example, the often superfluous and unnecessary announcements one hears on trains – was not only hilarious, but also completely, undeniably true.

Unspeakable also asks guests – and audience members – to nominate words that they would like to see removed from the dictionary, words that are over-used, or are just generally annoying, the sort of words that make one wince. Which got me thinking about words (and phrases) that give me the ick (there’s one for starters). Unsurprisingly, a lot of these have been gathered from social media.

 

First, research. I have no problem with the word per se, more with the context in which it is so often used. “I’ve done my research,” people say, by which they mean they have watched a number of YouTube videos made by members of the tin-foil hat wearing brigade that support their point of view, using dubious and highly selective facts and figures that conflate correlation and causality.

 

Curated: Literally, to carefully select, organize, and present a collection of items, information, or media. Fine if we are talking about a museum curator, painstakingly gathering a collection of artifacts and exhibits, but it’s rather pompous to use it in the context of compiling a Spotify playlist.

 

Side hustle: It’s an extra, usually part-time job, or a hobby that can be monetised, not some edgy, slightly shady practice. The expression has become so legitimised that even HMRC use it when talking about how income from sources other than a person’s main income is taxed, but it still irks me.

 

The next three fall into the same category. The math ain’t mathing; explain it to me like I’m five, and make it make sense are all used on social media sites (especially Threads) when someone doesn’t understand the subject at hand. First, the math ain’t mathing, with which I have a number of issues. Firstly, it’s maths, not math and secondly, mathing is not a word you will find in standard dictionaries and long may that continue to be the case. Explain it to me like I’m five is a request for an explanation without any confusing, grown-up words, often of a highly complex subject that could not, under any circumstances, using any form of words, be explainable to a five-year-old. Please, let’s say what we mean, i.e. “put this in simple terms that a layman would understand”, rather than insult everyone’s intelligence with twee expressions like this. Make it make sense: this tends to be used when a logical explanation of something complex or contradictory is required and while that may sometimes be a valid need, it often says more about the user’s inability to grasp the concept than the statement they are referring to. There’s more than a touch of the Dunning-Krugers about these three expressions, the logic of which usually runs along the lines of “I’m an intelligent person, but I don’t understand this, therefore it must be cobblers.”

 

Then we have I was today years old when I learned (insert subject). Gosh, this one I find truly infuriating. If you mean, I only learned today whatever it is that you learned recently, then say “I only learned today” otherwise it sounds infantile.

 

Finally (before I exceed my word count and your patience), there is "Tell me you (insert subject) without telling me you (insert subject)." Often this is a reply to a comment, opinion, or statement that the responder finds asinine or ill-informed, as in “Tell me you haven’t read Moby Dick without telling me you haven’t read Moby Dick.” I suppose it’s less blunt than saying “you don’t know what you’re talking about,” but I find it mawkish and patronising.

 

Thank you for your attention to this matter. (That’s another one!)