After a month of absence, DLOTW returns. Not with something I found on twitter, but one of the most ridiculous sentences I’ve heard. Apparently uttered in some sort of celebrity-based incarcerating reality show.
Coolio: “[My mom's] fried chicken would literally put on tennis shoes and run the f*** into your mouth”
Terrible.
Last week I crossed off another one of those “things to do before I die” when I appeared in the Bournemouth’s Daily Echo. Indeed for a few hours I was “7th most read story” before being edged down into 8th by a story about a spray-painted dead duck. I hadn’t actually spoken to them but they picked up the story from the earlier appearance in the Bristol Evening Post.
The curious thing was the headline: “Jamie Redknapp’s misuse of word is literally doing my head in”. A quote which was attributed to me. A worrying quote, not just because I didn’t actually say it, but because it doesn’t mean anything. It’s a criminal overuse of the L-word. Adding nothing to the sentence, and only serving to devalue further the L-word. Outrageous.
I shall complain naturally. No one misquotes the Literally Tsar!
It seems the reason they picked it up, is that Jamie Redknapp is from Bournemouth, and apparently still lives there. But sadly it turns out (though they attribute it to me), they are misusers.
I was looking forward to seeing this film. And then I saw this clip….
On Wednesday night I was doing my washing up whilst listening briefly to a BBC Radio 5 Live, and a commentary of a football match in which I had no interest. It was during this match between Blackburn Rovers vs Aston Villa that I heard the commentator say something which was as irritating as my fingernails being dragged across a blackboard.
In what way is the verb “to hare” literal? It is surely a metaphor for someone running like a hare. It is wrong in a similar way to the time that Gabby Logan said she was “literally frog-marched out of a shop” when she was a child.
Sports commentators have a wonderful job. They are paid money to attend games that other people pay to go to. Granted you have to sit through many games involving the likes of Scunthorpe and Hull, and go to places further North than you would ever willfully travel, but you sit through enough of those, and you are rewarded with sensational matches with quality top-4 teams, Champions League matches, World Cup matches. But sports commentators reward us with their privileged job, by frequently talking utter crap.
“When Andre Agassi meets a qualifier, he tends to literally steamroller them.”
“They’ve literally camped in the Fulham penalty area all game!”
It’s not just new ones, it can be the most experienced of them. The word “Colemanballs” in Private Eye is named after David Coleman who was renowned for making gaffes at the microphone. And things have got worse since he retired. Every issue of Private Eye is filled with idiotic stuff from commentators, and almost every week one of those is a full on “LiterallyBall” - a misuse of the L-word, and I hear that nail-on-chalkboard again.
They are so bad, that even people with no charisma, reading ability or concept of putting together an interesting video, are driven to making such a video of their innane quotes and putting it onto Youtube. (Warning: this is very very painful to watch).
Part of the problem is that commentators have hours to fill, and they seem to have too little material to talk about, and too little command of the English language in which they can ad-lib, without using particularly clichéd hackneyed stock-phrases.
I resolve to write directly to every commentator that I hear misusing the L-word from now on. Let’s see how I get on. I shall keep you posted.
Not literally I hope. #literallymisuse
Overheard on the bus “Rod Stewart literally shags anything that moves”.
Is this right? Wouldn’t the man be in an institution if this were true? It’s certainly a very very disturbing image. And if you see him, a reason to keep very very still!
