Since when was it seeooper?

Well? Since when was it?

Since when did we have "Seeooper Tuesday" and "Seeooper Candidates"?

(American elections feature flag-waving adjectives too)

I'm sure the Queen liked watching SeeooperMan Returns and I dare say she has a bowl of seeoop with her creeootons, but come on!

I may be a northern lad, used to kicking footballs in ginnels and drinking beer in't Bird 'i'th Hand, but I don't think I've ever heard - face-to-face - anyone pronounce "Super" like that.

The world's most misspelled word

is not "misspelled." It is, in fact, two words: A lot.

People obviously think it's one word. It isn't. Or should that be: It's not?

The next most misspelled word is "occurrence."

The word "minuscule" appears on the list, which is a good one, because before I saw it I might have been tempted by "miniscule."

Cyber geeks are now surveying blogs and using this as a barometer of how the English language is being used. A frightening prospect, I would suggest. A visit to the BBC Online's "Have Your Say" page will confirm what the geeks are saying - our language is being abused.

Or is it?

Maybe it's just evolving. What's wrong with "ppl" instead of "people"? Why not alot? As long as you can understand words, and the meaning of sentences, does correct spelling matter?

Besides, George Orwell called it Newspeak. If George predicted it, so it will be.

Agoraphobia - empty space horror...or shopping?

A strange coincidence today (is there such a thing as a non-strange concidence? Is "strange coincidence" tautological? Discuss). I've spoken to a young lady who's a recovering alcoholic - one of the side-effects was depression and panic attacks, particularly associated with being outdoors. I have also learned today, quite by chance, that agoraphobia is a term used to described someone who fears entering shops. It says so on NHS Direct, and if the NHS says so, it must be so.

As someone who regularly crumbles into a heap of blubbering mush (not unlike this blog) at the thought of shopping, does that make me an agoraphobe? I often attribute my hatred of shopping with being in a crowded place, which I would describe as claustrophobic. I also fear being brutally attacked by OAPs. Have you noticed how they creep up behind you while you're studying the shop shelf, head-to-toe in tweed camouflage and trailing armoured tartan shopping trolleys, then bundle you out of the way with a deft swipe of an AK-47 walking stick? No? Oh.

Any doctors reading this? Can anyone help? Or am I an OAPhobe? An OAPagoraclaustrophobe? Throw in some of those horrible incy-wincys and I could be an arachno-OAP-agoraclaustrphobe. Beats having man-flu anyway.

When I was a wee reporter I remember doing a feature on the dangers of drug dependency. Stay with me, this is related. I can't remember how we found this guy. He lived in Orrell, near Wigan. He was talking about getting addicted to valium, temazepam, diazepam and parmesan. Then he said something which completely turned the whole feature on its head. He said, "I haven't left the house for 16 years."

His descent into drug and cheese-fuelled madness had turned him into an agoraphobe. There was an early 1990s film called Copycat, one of the many Silence of the Lambs clones at the time, where Sigourney Weaver played an agoraphobic ex-serial killer criminal profiler (you know the type). She couldn't even stand at the front door of her flat without becoming a quivering wreck. This guy hadn't opened his front door for 16 years. He couldn't go near an open window. Other people did errands for him. Then he told me that he had been seeing a shrink, and that last week he had stood at the front door, with the door open, for the first time in years. Next week it was planned that he was going to walk to his garden gate.

I remember going, photographer in tow, and this throng of people all standing round while this guy, looking for all the world like he was walking a tightrope, swayed and moaned and cursed the whole six yards to his garden gate.

So you will excuse me, NHS Direct, if I tell you that agoraphobia has nothing to do with a fear of shopping. There's a guy in Orrell who can tell you what it really is.

We need a new word or phrase for "shopping horror." Mine's "Trafford Centre" followed closely by "Bangor High Street".

All's well that ends

That's it. Christmas and New Year has come and gone, and all we have left is a new hole in our belts to punch. That, and that bottle of cheap plonk we can't bear to drink.

My New Year resolution was to get published, which feels cheapened by the fact that I am already "publishing" my blog, and I continue to get media coverage for clients at work. I know lots of novelists (one l or two?) used to be professional writers, and you might think that it's an obvious step, but it feels like a double-edged sword to me. My work keeps me writing, yes, but it also lessens my appetite to carry on after hours because the notion of being "in print" is not so exciting to me. I still dream about people reading and liking my work, and seeing some fancy hardback novel with my name on it beautifully stacked in a Waterstones window, but the graduation from this to that feels more like a work promotion, and not the life-defining experience it should be. And yes, right now I can hear my mother saying, "Just pull your socks up and do it, son."

So on New Year's Eve I declared my resolution out loud, to an admiring throng, then pulled my socks up, lost my balance, dropped my beer, and fell over. Hopefully, not too prophetic.

Regarding my previous post, I have left a suggestion with the BBC that, using their new interactive, extremely over-hyped digital service, they give football viewers the option to mute football commentators while keeping the background crowd noise. This way you can watch football and get some feeling of the atmosphere, without someone destroying the English language over the top of it. And stuffing your head with brainless chat:

John Motson: "Mark, you get the feeling that whoever scores first in this game will have the edge."

My licence fee is well spent.

Ode to the Adverb

I am a TV football pundit
Trevor is my name
I talk in cliches at the end of the day
And hype a boring game
But when it comes to adverbs
I'm really all at sea
I name my man of the match, and say:
"He has played brilliant."