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Our new Wanker of the Week is not an individual, not a group or company, but a whole class of people, and not particularly well-defined at that. We are referring to most, if not all, television and radio presenters under the age of thirty-five, and here's why ... Most of these people, whether they appear on two-bit local radio programmes or national television news or current affairs broadcasts, whether they are male or female (though we have a suspicion the girls are worse), whether they come from some grimy northern urb and have an uncouth accent you could cut with a knife, or from a leafy Surrey suburb and and speak a sort of slightly genteel estuary English, whether they are flaxen-haired and indigenous, ginger and aggressively Caledonian, mellifluously Welsh or represent an ethnic minority and owe their appointment not to ability but to politically-correct tokenism, have in common one word they cannot pronounce properly. It's not a difficult word. We all use it. It has a scant two syllables. It's easy to understand and we all know what it means. It is, apparently, a little difficult to pronounce properly and many people mangle its first vowel quite horribly, but that's not what we're complaining about. If they were brought up to pronounce “cow” as “caaoow-er”, that's sad and annoying but we don't require them to re-educate themselves. Though actually, come to think of it, how hard would it be? Not very – just a few minutes' work every day and in a couple of weeks they'd sound as plummy as Plumstead. Is that too much to ask? But no, there's something far more important to examine, something that insults the intelligence of every listener or viewer, something unforgivably crass and thoughtless, and it's this: whenever they use the word “thousand” they can't help themselves but emphasise the first syllable. They just can't bring themselves to say, simply, “thousand”. It has to be “thousand”. Now we mention it, you know just what we mean, don't you? “Over nine and a half thousand people drive Ford Focus diesel cars”. “The average grocery bill for a family of five is more than seventeen thousand pounds a year”. “At least twenty-three thousand households had their water cut off last year”, and so on. Why do they do it? We don't, and you don't. Nor does Jeremy Paxman. Nor does David Cameron. Nor does the Queen, or Noel Fielding, or Dame Judi Dench, or Graham Norton. We think Patrick Moore might, but he talks so fast we can't be sure. Besides, he deals in astronomical figures so perhaps he has an excuse. No, the reason they do it is that they are very stupid themselves, and they believe that we are as stupid as they are. Unfortunately they have never stopped to wonder whether this is in fact true, and no one has had the good sense to explain to them that in fact many adults in this country do have more brains than a hamster and they are therefore addressing their intellectual superiors almost every time they open their mouths. You see, they have managed in their own fumbling way to work out that “a thousand” is rather a big number. It's a lot bigger than six, for instance, and even bigger than twenty-three. And they want to make sure that we all realise just how very big it is, so they religiously put that heavy stress on the first syllable every time they use it - “Three thousand people marched through London today to protest against some damn thing or other” ... “The financial crisis will cost every family in Britain as much as a thousand pounds over the next three years ...” ... “Five year old Hayley has collected seven thousand Coke bottle-tops in her toy drawer and has no idea what to do with them ...” So, just in case any of these trendy young energetic empty-headed would-be celebrities might chance to read this page (what? You mean there are people who don't read Grumpy Old Sod? Ridiculous ...) we'd like to explain to them, very quietly and simply and in a totally non-threatening and unprejudiced way, that the majority of people in this country do actually know that a thousand is quite a big number. A lot of us could count up to it if we wanted. Some of us can even visualise it ... you know, we have ten fingers, so ten people in a bus queue could hold up a hundred fingers, and if each of those people was a whole bus queue there would be a thousand fingers and we could stick them all up your arse, you ignorant, pointless, patronising prats, you sad, barely articulate, cliché-bound tossers, you ... WANKERS! The GOS says: I'm a bit worried about five year old Hayley, to be honest. It must be a dreadful worry to her. She could end up really stressed, and someone ought to do something about it, preferably by giving her parents rather a lot of public money. Also, has she drunk all that Coke herself? She must be a fat as a pig by now. Er ... no, I take that back. She might be a Muslim, in which case comparing her to a pig would be incredibly insensitive because Muslims regard pigs as unclean. Or is that Jews? I don't mean that Jews are unclean, but isn't it Jews who don't eat bacon? Honestly, I'm getting a bit confused and hung up about this ... oh no! I shouldn't have said “hung up” because that might remind some people of the crucifixion and ... Well, b*gger it. Hayley, you're a porky little bloater with a strange obsession. Sort yourself out, I can't be bothered. I've got thaaowsands of better things to think about ... either on this site or on the World Wide Web. Copyright © 2010 The GOS |
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