Monday 23 July 2012

Between he, for we - pooh!

I'm a big fan of Stewart Lee and enjoy his contributions in The Observer when he takes over David Mitchell's column. This week he was being satirical and ironic about the Olympics and the Rings. Partly because of the toilet humour of much of it I wondered if his use of "we" was also a joke in "to we satirists". I don't think so, as he has written it before in this column: I suppose it is an established phrase. On the Media Show last week a Guardian columnist said "to we licence-payers". Is it a media thing or general, perhaps a sub-/conscious feeling that "me", "us" and even "him" are somehow second-class or suspect pronouns? Is it only sports commentators who say things like "between he and X"?

Saturday 21 July 2012

Yes. No. Absolutely. 2012

I asked some of my younger friends a year or so ago if they'd noticed people saying "Yes. No." to agree with something. They weren't aware of it, although I thought they, like most people under fifty (45?), did it themselves. I'm glad to see that the excellent BBC TV Olympic satire "2012" often has people say it, along with all sorts of current media and PR speak, "We gotta move up a level, guys", "It's all good", "You so have" etc. Of course people in the US have already written books about this sort of thing. There's even one called, I hear, "Yeh. No. Totally." Anyone remember the old "Yes / No Interlude"? "Are you ready?" "Yes." BONG!