In the ’70s and early ’80s, in his outstanding TV criticism in the Observer, Clive James had an unfailing ear for the peculiarities of American pronunciation. Facing David Frost’s sing-song questions, Henry Kissinger fell bag on swapping his DTs and CGs. Meeting Frost’s aria-ettes on Vietnam with the sound of gravel being forced through a hand mincer, Big K conceded that ‘manipulading the domesdig affairs of another gountry is always gombligaded’. On Chile, where the Americans had been up to their usual tricks, Kissinger explained it was down to a certain ‘peculiaridy of the consdidution’. On another occasion a year later, asked what he and Reagan had discussed pre-election, Kissinger revealed the devastating charm of his verbal dricks. ‘I jusd wished him good lug’. No wonder Hopalong won.
Month: April 2014
Raising the Bar
Justin Wood, the Today programme’s Useful Idiot, was let out of his play-pen this morning to tackle a story with real numbers in it. He promptly crashed and burnt. So spectacular was the crash and burn that the erudite Prof McManus’ erudition flat-lined and later all but crashed and burnt too. At issue was the distinction between pass mark and pass rate for the Professional and Linguistic Assessments Board test used to assess clinical and English language skills in the – as the media would have it – foreign devils more formally known for the time being as International Medical Graduates. In Woodie’s upside down world, the great secret was to up the pass rate, the better to weed out those with forked tongues. In the real world, of course, upping the pass rate, rather than the pass mark, would have the effect of letting though not fewer but more IMGs.
The Blind Archer
Hell may have no fury greater than a woman scorned, but surely Heaven can have no joy greater than a woman reformed. In a remarkable development, scientists in North America have popped not a bun but a biodegradable scaffold layered with a patient’s vulval and other cells in the oven, and after the required time at the requisite temperature been rewarded with a fully formed vagina. Four women born without a vagina have had ready-vaginas made this way implanted, and have subsequently reported normal or even atomic levels of ‘desire, arousal, satisfaction and orgasm’. This extraordinary advance may in the short term pave the way for a gruesome commerce in designer vaginas – each scaffold is individually crafted – but in time it can only end one way: the day will dawn when we pop not buns but homunculi in the oven, to be rewarded nine months later with little incubi, all of whom will go on to report normal or even atomic levels of desire, arousal, satisfaction and orgasm. Truly, science knows no bounds.
Seven Seven
W1A (BBC Two) continues to amuse. Like totally. Following on from Twenty Twelve and WIA, the BBC must commission a third series, Seven Seven, being the slogan for like the new dietary advice to eat seven portions of fruit and veg seven days a week. With Lord Grantham tasked to deliver an alternative to the gruesome vision of a bloated ageing nation belching and farting its way to immortality, and the awesome perfect curves of Siobhan on hand to nail any loose puppies to the floor, Dr No SO gets it. Like totally. Give this pony some traction, guys, and we can be drinking from the fire-hose from the get go.