‘Who,’ I wondered to myself as I folded away my husband’s pyjamas, which he’d left on the hall floor (why the hall floor?), ‘is this woman sprinkling glottal stops like currants into a Welsh pancake mix and between each one inserting a cliché?’
It was Sally Bercow, the cheery wife of the Speaker of the House of Commons. She was on Today only for a minute and a half, so wasted no time in setting the tone by reminding us that Napoleon said the English were a nation of shopkeepers. Then we were told that ‘our high streets are fast approaching their sell-by date’. Do they have sell-by dates? There was no time to resolve this doubt, for the monologue was beginning to resemble a Spectator competition inviting readers to squash as many clichés as possible into a short piece of prose.
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