Not content with having to continually suffer the transformation of English into our second language nationally by the cast of EastEnders, television presenters and other miscellaneous mispronouncers, the assault on grammatical correctness is now being spearheaded by the 'creative' advertising agencies who follow each other like sheep when a 'new' idea comes along.
On the pronunciation front, we have been treated to actor Idris Elba and the £ 7 million Sky campaign where he trumpets "mumfs" (months) and Game of "Frones" (Thrones), amongst his other SAS-style attacks on the English language.
The pressure is kept up by the likes of EastEnders, where they take "phoh-ohs" (photos), "faught" it was a "fret" ('thought' it was a 'threat'), have "free fings" ('three things') they need to do, use "twih-er" ('twitter') and have a "faahzand" ('thousand') people to see before "vey" ('they') run their "char-ih-ee marafans" ('charity marathons'). Before they all head off to Sonia's relations in "Keh-ehr-in" (Kettering).
Appalling.
Not to be outdone with Estuary English taking over TV, the advertising agencies throw their own hats into the ring with completely nonsensical and moronic straplines for brands that are meant to be amusing. However, they leave the majority of the public cold, especially when they are repeated ad nauseam for weeks on end.
The first of these was the utterly meaningless campaign by mobile phone operator O2. They insist we "be more dog", which is about as intelligent - or possibly even less so - than a dog having its own campaign to "be more flea". This was followed by one of the 'independent' (ha ha - independent my foot) insurance comparison websites telling us that Fred (or Barney, or whoever it is) "is so Money Supermarket". Yes, in the same way, and as intellectual as saying Sir Richard Branson "is so aeroplane". Utterly and totally nonsensical.
And then into the foray arrived Olay, the beauty products firm, and one of many in that industry known for advertising the wonderful ingredients they put in their product. This is all under the assumption that the average woman is a biochemist and actually knows what they are wittering on about. There's hyaluronic acid, amino-peptide complexes and pro-vitamin B5 (all backed up by 72% of the 58 women out of a population of some 35 million females who were asked, agreeing).
However, in following those advertisers with their stupid, meaningless strap-lines, their creative agency - and do bear in mind that the agency is actually being paid for this - has come up with the astounding, ground-breaking, original and near death-defying statement "Your Best Beautiful". Now, how this is deemed as a suitable new entrant into the market to help part women from their money is beyond me.
And not to be outdone, Jacobs has decided that their new crackers are more "lunchy". A noun conveniently turned into an adverb. Which presumably means my new bleach must be more "toilety".
These are certainly as creative and winning as the runner-up in the British Boat Race, although compared to products we buy in the supermarket, at least in the case of the boat race, the boat's contents are worth considerably more than the boat.
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