Newspapers; television; the internet; magazines; radio; words; more words; still more words. Words everywhere you turn. That's why today words have to be pretty memorable to make us sit up and notice them (Example: “You say Donald Trump pays how much for his haircuts?”).
But every now and then someone mints a turn of phrase that is the lexical equivalent of hearing the first bars of a song you know will still be being listened to by your grandchildren. When Amy Winehouse accepted her Grammy on Sunday for Record of the Year with the words, “for my Blake, my Blake incarcerated”, referring to her husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, who is banged up in London's Pentonville prison following a pub brawl, it had the indefinable tang of something poetically haunting. You stop and check yourself. It's like running your finger down a smooth piece of wood and suddenly catching it on a splinter.
Sometimes such phrases escape from the mouths of politicians and monarchs. “I am not a crook,” said the crook Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. “Ich bin ein Berliner,” said John F. Kennedy. Churchill offered us: “We will fight them on the beaches”; Harold Macmillan that we “had never had it so good”; and Queen Victoria: “We are not amused.” “Read my lips,” urged George Bush Snr, during his 1988 US presidential campaign, while his son recently came up with the more startling: “I'm the decider.”
In between Bill Clinton assured us he “never inhaled” and “did not have sexual relations with that woman”. Although it's hard to find a way usefully to deploy it in everyday chit-chat, Senator Larry Craig's recent confession following his airport embarrassment that he has “a wide stance when going to the bathroom” has an arresting ring to it, don't you think?
Some phrases slide into our vocabulary so thoroughly that people can forget where they originated. “I'll have what she's having,” said the envious female diner in When Harry Met Sally after Meg Ryan's confected coffee-shop orgasm. “And it's goodnight from him,” said Ronnie Barker at the end of his TV show with Ronnie Corbett. “You talkin' to me?” was Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver. Star Wars supplied “May the force be with you”, while Oscar Wilde wrote “A handbag?” a long time before Edith Evans made the question unforgettable. “The name's Bond, James Bond,” has been reprised a billion times over by men who bear as much resemblance to a suave spy as Michael Moore does to a Twiglet.
Advertisement
“You silly moo” was Alf Garnett's term of endearment for his wife; “You dirty old man” was Harold Steptoe's for his father. The oily Francis Urquhart in House of Cards made “You might well think that; I couldn't possibly comment” the favoured response to any request for confirmation of a rumour. The space programme has given us “The Eagle has landed” and “Houston, we have a problem”.
Did you enjoy this column? I can't be sure: it's what you call a known unknown. You didn't? Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. Just show me the money. Doh!