Well, happy Friday Foxy fans and greetings from Rotund Runcorn – not exactly XBIZ Miami – and I am sure you will beleive me when I say there is no sign of creators, performers, content producers, webmasters, brand execs, marketers, developers and service providers, among other market players.
Mind you, the Northern Massive is out in force.
Our trip to sample the delights of the North-West is all part of my esteemed editor’s strategy to draw up a new five-point plan to make the team more diverse and inclusive and, even though it is headed by a big fat bald white bloke, he reckons it is down to us to make it work.
Not that we have seen him yet. Just by fluke, his elderly mum lives a few miles down the road in leafy Frodsham (where both Daniel Craig and Gary Barlow grew up) and it’s her birthday weekend, so he can claim the whole trip on expenses.
But just as I was ready to rifle off a few insults to him, up popped a shocking news story which claims some of the most treasured British insults could all but disappear in the coming decades. It seems dozens are on the “at-risk” list, according to a survey, which quizzed 2,000 people on which insults they recognised and found many had never heard of the “classics”.
Top of the list was lummox, which flummoxed 62% of people under 28 years old; however, just over half of all those surveyed – of all ages – did not recognise the East Anglian term.
‘Blighter’ stumped 54% of young people, while nearly a third had never come across a plonker, prat, tosspot, toerag, or git.
Harriet Scott, CEO of Perspectus Global, the company behind the survey, said: “Language changes, evolves and moves on. Our research shows that calling someone a plonker or a prat is no longer a fashionable way to insult them.
“Interestingly, the research highlights the extent to which Brits feel some of the more traditional jibes feel softer and less severe, than some of today’s more controversial ones.”
Then again, maybe that is the solution to the five-point plan. If we can get a few more plonkers, prats, tosspots, toerags, and gits in, our team will be as diverse as it gets…
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