As a former pastor who used to preach twice a week, live and in person, and who has perpetrated a few verbal horrors of my own -- none, thank God, as catastrophic as the ones reported here -- my sympathy goes out to the unfortunately named Mr. Naughtie.
Of course, our own politicians and broadcasters on this side of the pond have produced our own horrors. Joe Biden's "big ******* deal" comes to mind, as does the overexcited football sportscaster who famously said, "Look at that [S. O. B.] run!"Michael Quinion, editor, wrote: WORD HUNT Two embarrassing errors on BBC radio programmes last
Monday and a misspeaking in the House of Commons the same day have
led to the - possibly temporary - creation of two new slang terms.
It started at 8am, when James Naughtie, a regular presenter of the
BBC Radio Four flagship breakfast magazine Today, was trailing what
was to follow after the news. Through a slip of the tongue, he
changed the surname of the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, into the
C-word. He was so embarrassed that he could only splutter his way
through the remainder of his script. A colleague, Andrew
Marr, while mentioning the gaffe 90 minutes later on his own live
programme, Start The Week, promised listeners he wouldn't use it,
then accidentally did. Nick Herbert, Labour police spokesman, made
it a hat trick by saying it in Parliament later in the day when he
intended to mention cuts. For a moment, it felt like an epidemic.
The Today story went around the world and clips appeared on YouTube
and elsewhere. A new rhyming slang term appeared: JEREMY, short for
"Jeremy Hunt". The error began to be referred to as a NAUGHTIE (one
joker wrote, "Naughtie by name and naughty by nature", a try at
nominative determinism, in which people take on roles prompted by
their names). Some newspapers played on his name with headlines
such as "Radio 4 slips up with Naughtie word", "Naughtie language"
and "Oh, who's been a Naughtie boy?" These strain at wit: their
writers surely know James Naughtie (a Scot) says his surname as
/nQxtI/ (the first bit rhyming with "loch") and not as "naughty".
The main response to James Naughtie's fluff was sympathy, not least
among broadcasters, for whom verbal catastrophe is never more than
a breath away. One infamous train wreck of an announcement was
perpetrated by the late Jack de Manio. In 1956 a big feature about
Nigeria was aired on the BBC Home Service to mark a visit by the
Queen and Prince Philip. Its title was Land of the Niger, but he
misread his script and added an extra "g" to the last word. That
one resulted in questions being asked in Parliament.
Again, my sympathy to Mr. Naughtie and the other perpetrator/victims involved -- and I recommend the newsletter highly. It comes in late Friday night, and ought not be missed by lovers of language.
