Mind Your Language | 15 February 2003

I am excited by a letter from Kensington, but before that let me notice a fearful symmetry between Martin Bashir’s interview with Michael Jackson and the advertisements that punctuated it. These were intended to appeal to young people. One, for the Disney rehash of Treasure Island called Treasure Planet, has the animated Jim Hawkins saying, ‘How cool is that?’ – not a sentence of Stevenson’s.

I mentioned this phrase a fortnight ago, and so I was bound to notice it all over the place. But I didn’t expect it to be quite so ubiquitous, for, immediately after the commercial break, we heard poor old Jacko remark, ‘How ignorant is that?’ about people who accused him of having plastic surgery or spending the night with children or something.

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Now for Kensington, from which the ever alert Mr John Hartley sent a letter that my husband has ‘tidied up’ (i.e.,