Unspeakable

One of the few downsides to sitting here gambling like a loony day and night is the necessity of watching and listening to the gormless twerps and illiterate goons that populate the racing channels. I was intending to launch into a deconstruction of horse-racing speak, but my gay friends assure me that most people aren't interested. Hard to accept, but instead I've selected a few choice examples of football-speak that always appear when a group of bores get together.

'He always gives you 110%'(some supermen give a startling 120%). No wonder I didn't make it as a professional footballer. Lazy bugger that I am, I steadfastly refused to give any more than a miserly 100%. If only I hadn't held that little bit back then who knows what might have happened. I could have been the first Wayne Rooney(certainly ugly enough).

'Back of the net'. Where's that then? Where's the front of the thing? How about 'goal', something you hear remarkably rarely considering it is the object of the exercise.

'Finish'. Never shooting, or scoring or missing, but 'a nice/poor finish'. When did this become common, and why does every one of the bastards have to say it?
The only people entitled to talk about a 'nice finish' are plasterers or masseurs.

'For fun'. A centre-forward that scores a few goals is always described as 'scoring goals for fun'. Really? If that is what the moron does to amuse himself, then why doesn't he do it more often? Of course, what he really does for fun is to count his money and manipulate his furry parts at the same time.

'Result'. As in 'getting a result'. If you get beat 10-0, that is a result.

'Down to the wire'. This one drives me crackers. Why has everyone adopted this expression, used in North American horse racing?(I'm sure you knew that). If it didn't go down to the wire, it would never end. Others I can't abide are 'rookie', 'left field', and 'the whole nine yards'.

'Left foot'. As in 'lovely left foot'. Are left feet naturally more beautiful than right ones?

Strangely, football drones never talk about a 'level playing field' or 'moving the goalposts'. It seems these expressions are too embarrassing, even for them.

There are myriad other examples. Why does this happen? I'll tell you. People hear it from a semi-literate talking head on the box and this lends a sort of legitimisation along the lines of 'well, A. Pundit must be an authority on this subject because he's on the telly, so I'll copy what he says'.
Mr. Pundit, of course doesn't know where he got it from either, so the whole country ends up adopting the speech patterns of unoriginal, unintellegent non-thinkers. It wouldn't be so bad if the pundit was someone like Brian Sewell or Richard Dawkins, but that is depressingly unlikely.


If you find yourself coming out with any this brainless blather, lock yourself away with a copy of Apologia Pro Vita Sua, and don't come out until you can recite the whole thing.

Samantha has just cast her lovely eye over the above, and echoes my exasperation at the intellectual supineness of the average Briton. She has popped in with an antique she is restoring. She is gently dusting it while the world's worst punter scrapes varnish and wax off next to her. He is incorrigible.