Two Chaps Talking

Dear Boy,

So true, so true. Polari is a loss to us all. Fortunately the BBC have put out all of the Julian and Sandy sketches on tape. In my favourite they describe, in lovingly camp detail, being shipwrecked...

Horne: Good Heavens. That sounds awful. Did you manage to drag yourselves up on deck?

Jules: Oooh no. We were quite casual, weren't we Sand?

I had a bit of a vada round the web for more and turned up the following version of the King James Bible.

1 In the beginning Gloria created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was nanti form, and void; and munge was upon the eke of the deep. And the nanti lucoddy of Gloria trolled upon the eke of the aquas.
3 And Gloria cackled, Let there be sparkle: and there was sparkle.
4 And Gloria vardad the sparkle, that it was bona: and Gloria divided the sparkle from the munge.
5 And Gloria screeched the sparkle Day, and the munge he screeched nochy. And the bijou nochy and the morning were the una day.

Sounds a lot better if you imagine Kenneth Williams intoning it.

Your thoughts, though, inspired me to the following. A bit of a list of my current linguistic pet hates which I offer in the certain knowledge that you will never have uttered one of them.

Acquire

It's an awful admission but, alongside the Shipping Forecast and an occasional blast of The Archers, I'm growing fond of Antiques Roadshow. I'm sure it's been going longer than you've been over there but, in case you had better things to do on Sunday evenings, I'll refresh your memory. The programme goes out on BBC television in the (I'm inclined to say God Forsaken) graveyard slot just before Songs of Praise. Much like Radio 4 cricket commentary it projects a Zen calm quite unrelated to its content into the already bucolic and unrushed downtime between afternoon kip and dinner and, for this reason, has become something of a cult.

The format is blindingly simple. People queue for hours to show their old junk to experts, fervently hoping that the shite encrusted spill vase that old Uncle Pelfrey picked up in a drunken fit of remorse on a dirty weekend in Totnes is actually a rare Sevres sphincter-easer from the boudoir of the Sun King.

There are two ways of appreciating this great British institution. The first is to turn your own valuations into a betting or drinking game the second is to watch the tragic faces of the hapless suckers as they are told the real valuation. There are several scenarios...

a) Some dead-eyed, venal Tory bought an oil painting from commoner for a fiver, believing that, with his superior education and refinement, he has spotted something of supreme value and brings it along seeking public validation. He is usually informed that such items can be had by the container-load from Indonesia and that the ignorant Cockney barrow boy he bought it from was called actually called Giles, had a degree in art history and has recently retired to Marbella.
Facial effect: Smug to humiliated panic

b) A comfortably middle-class burgher from the retirement belt brings in the handsome Georgian silver punch bowl he invested in at retirement, expecting it to have risen modestly in value so he can smile quietly at his financial acumen and restrained but cultured tastes. He is informed that the piece comprises a stolen EPNS bowls cup, Circa 1982, a balti dish from an Indian restaurant and the clutch plate from a 1968 Commer van spot welded together by a blind scrap dealer with palsy. The hallmarks turn out to have been put on with a felt pen.
Facial effect: Detached amusement to outraged horror

c) Husband and wife bring in a small oil painting inherited from the mother-in-law he clearly loathes. Both have high hopes for its value and a windfall from the old bat that will keep two terminally idle sons and a nymphomaniac daughter out of state education long enough to turn them into productive earners in the City and get them off their hands in a long and happy retirement. The painting indeed turns out to be valuable whereupon both deny emphatically that they care about its value or that they would ever part with something of such enormous emotional importance.
Facial effect: Utter relief to rat-like duplicity and cunning

Whatever the actual valuation there are two verbal tics that flicker through all the interviews. All pieces were 'handed down through the family'; usually meaning that one of their parents bought it in a junk shop more than five years ago. Also, nothing was ever 'bought' it was always 'acquired'; 'My Father acquired it during the Boxer uprising'. 'My Mother acquired it from an antiques fair in Reading'. 'I just acquired it from the bag of that old lady in front of me in the queue'.

Why do a group of people, distinguished by their greed and their atavistic desire to get something for nothing, baulk so much at the simple concept of buying something?

Funnily enough, estate agents are big on acquiring too. "Your opportunity to acquire this much sought after broom cupboard in fashionable Toxteth". It's OK. It's not bought. No filthy money changes hands. Except for my 15% commission, of course; which I will demand in used, soiled, grease encrusted fivers and use to rub against my ghastly, shrunken rubbery genitals until I shriek out a painful lonely little climax.

Within

" I attended theatre school and had several opportunities to act. I am currently working in the industry and would like an opportunity within film."

Euan Blair's application for a place in Film Idol, cinema's answer to Pop Idol.

My little Tony, our noble PM, risked his policital career and socialist credentials to send that little bastard to a monstrously expensive and, we are assured, academically brilliant private school. And suddenly there is that fucking irritating 'within'. Why, whenever anyone is writing anything vaguely formal or business related, can't they resist sticking in a 'within' when an 'in' is all that's required.

The best examples usually come from estate agents or in job ads.

"A gloriously appointed home within London's fashionable Notting Hill".

"A challenging opportunity within a fast-growing sales team".

Now I think of it, use of 'within' is usually bracketed with appallingly convoluted and strained English, but why is it ever thought necessary? Is it more than 'in'? Is the house not just located in the district but, in some way I am intellectually ill-equipped to conceive, intrinsic to it? When someone writes of 'extremely unique' one can at least feel that they are clumsily trying to express a superlative quality of uniqueness, however unnecessary that might be, but more in than in? Superlative insideness? My brain positively melts down. It's like one of those Steven Hawking books that everyone claims to have read that involves trying to imagine things in five or more dimensions.

Self Starter/Team Player

And while we're on the subject of recruitment ads. There's something about the whole job interview process that just makes you question who's kidding who. Particularly when the self satisfied fucker on the far side of the desk leans back and says...

"So why do you want to work for us then?"

...what kind of answer is he expecting? There are only two; a) I'm out of work you bloated excuse for a wannabe plutocrat or b) you are stupid and vain enough to be offering more money than the last gang of slavering, decerebrate masturbating bonoboes.

We can't we get away with questions like that anywhere else. You don't ask the plumber 'So why do you want to clean 19 yards of impacted faecal matter from my U bend?' You don't ask someone on a date 'So why, in your own words, do you want to sleep with me?'

What sort of anus believes anything anyone says when applying anyway. I'm lying if I express any interest other than a job that pays too much for doing too little and you're kidding yourself if you think you want anything more than someone smart enough to be competent and stupid enough to be exploitable.

But worst of all is the almost ubiquitous demand that applicants should be 'motivated self-starters' and 'team players.'

Asking someone to be a 'motivated self starter' translates as...

'If, at any point in the future you fail to do something vital because I have neglected to brief you, will you be prepared not only to accept the blame but to admit that it wasn't mere neglect but a fundamental flaw in your personality?' Asking someone to be a team player means they should be able to do this while dealing with the sum neuroses of the rest of the company.

Putting 'Self starter' in a job ad is admission that your future employer is incompetent, 'Team Player' a warning that his staff are a bunch of sociopaths.

Another particular favourite is the cretin who, in what he believes to be a display of incisive interpersonal evaluation, asks you to enumerate your own faults. It has become the interviewee's favourite game to list faults that actually make them sound better.

"I guess I'm a bit of a workaholic". "I suppose I tend to pay too much attention to detail". Why not just add "... and I have a regrettable tendency to fall to my knees in the presence of my superiors and spontaneously fellate them while offering them money".

In my last interview, the fool asked me how my mother would describe me if she met me in the street.

And finally. The piece of superfluous verbal effluent that exercises me most..

'I have to say...'

Believe me, you don't.

T.