Carol Thatcher, the daughter of the former British prime minister, has been fired by the BBC's One show for referring to a tennis player as a 'golliwog'.
The controller of BBC 1, Jay Hunt, took to the corporation's studios this morning to defend the decision. On Radio 4's Today programme, she said the BBC had given Thatcher ample opportunity to make a fulsome apology. Oops! Fulsome does not mean full. According to the Collins dictionary, it means 'excessive or insincere, especially in an offensive or distasteful way'. How ironic that a BBC boss stepping into a row about the use of language should commit a howler herself.
I shouldn't be surprised. It's that old menace, language inflation, that I blogged about a year ago. No one ever calls for an inquiry: it has to be a full inquiry. And too many people worry that short words lack gravitas, which surely explains why Jay Hunt said fulsome rather than full. They're wrong. Back in 1948, Sir Ernest Gowers wrote a wonderful book called Plain Words, which told civil servants to write in everyday language rather than jargon. Over six decades later, it's still available as The Complete Plain Words. Jay Hunt should buy a copy.
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