This is a guest post by Chuffer.
Now, if you found Life of Brian funny, particularly the scene about ‘Weleasing Woderick’, you’ll love the new newsreader at BBC Radio Solent. Not only is she unable to read aloud (words like ‘legislature’ prove awkward, and ‘sister ship’ somehow becomes ‘ship sister’) but she has a speech impediment that means ‘Cameron’ becomes ”Camewon’, and ‘aggressive’ becomes agwessive’. And, of course, ‘radio’ becomes ‘wadio’.
Listen 1hr 29mins in, here
How does someone who can’t read aloud become a BBC newsreader? Is there no stage of the application process at which someone points out gently that a news reader has to convert the written word into clear, easily understood, spoken word? Do they employ window cleaners who can’t reach the windows? Or drivers who can’t drive?
How does someone who can’t read aloud become a BBC newsreader? Is there no stage of the application process at which someone points out gently that a news reader has to convert the written word into clear, easily understood, spoken word? Do they employ window cleaners who can’t reach the windows? Or drivers who can’t drive?
No matter, with all that telly tax coming in, who cares how the money is spent?
Can’t say I had any difficulty understanding her.
nor me.
is this a self defeating post?
Good for her and good for Radio Solent. Did you really find her slight speech impediment funny?
I was going to say “No, of course I don’t find it funny, pour soul, not her fault etc etc”, but, to be truthful, it IS funny.
That may well be insulting, but I find it as much of an insult that our tellytax is used to pay someone who simply cannot do her job properly. And by ‘properly’ I mean that, if she’s telling us about events that happen in Reading, it should be called ‘Reading’, not ‘Wedding’. If she said “There have been fights in wedding today..” you’d assume that she was talking about violence at some nuptuals somewhere, rather than the town – even though the latter scenario is more likely. Weddings in Reading could be a bloodbath.
Anyway, my point is this. Newsreading should be about clarity and unambiguity.
And I too have a speech impediment (thanks to missing teeth!), so I wouldn’t dare inflict my newsreading skills on a baffled public. (Or should that be mishing teeth?)
That was quite a funny reply but I still think you are wrong to find her speech impediment funny. I think she is quite brave.
‘Brave’? Why should bravery come into it? I don’t want to listen to a news bulletin and think “Gosh, she’s brave!” at the end of it. I want to feel that I have been informed of the day’s events, in a clear, undramatic and straightforward way. I don’t want to have my listening put on hold for a second or two while I wonder “Did she mean ‘wild’ or ‘riled’?”, or “Did she mean ranking or wa – the other one?”
You made me laugh out loud again but- like Roland and Ron B said- I understood what Kim said without having to think about it. Does it really do any harm to have someone with a slight speech impediment reading the news? Really?
Does it matter? Well, in the same way as I want the pilot on my holiday plane not to suffer from a slight inability to fly, or my taxi driver not to have a slight driving impediment – YES!
Chuffer, Daisy is a troll; you are feeding him.
If she has a speech impediment, I would say it is very slight. To my ears, it was more group than gwoup and aggressive rather than aggwessive. There was perhaps more of a hint of it in one pronunciation of British which sounded slightly garbled. She doesn’t have received pronunciation or perfect diction but I thought it wasn’t anything like as bad as Cawol Thatcher or Michael Heseltine, for example.
I have noticed that the Beeboid Corporation does employ people who have lisps or minor speech peculiarities or what I would consider not particularly good voices for broadcasting. Heather Irvine, I think her name is, has a lisp and that Welsh bloke who used to be a boy singer is all hissing sibilance which is slightly offputting to listen to, yet they give him lots of presenting work.
the one that I have a problem with is the Radio 4 continuity announcer of Jamaican heritage, Neil Nunes. Not because of his accent which I love, I could listen to Michael Holding and Tony Cozier all day, but because of his appaling intonation. When he started in 2006 I assumed/hoped he would improve, he hasn’t. If I do a crap job for a client I may not get paid and certainly won’t keep being given work, why are the BBC so keen on this chap?
Personally, I think we`re onto something here!
As we scoff at the EU and its Transmanche-Nord notion that lumps Cornwall in with Normandy in terms of their governance(one day!), the BBC have shown them how to crash cultures together for nothing other than admin or cost.
What has Dorset got to do with Brighton…but both are lumped under the Solent news, as if it`s one region.
Only done due to presumption and cost. Dorset is part of Wessex, so there is a much greater reason to include it with the Bristol/Somerset region…or even Cornwall and Devon.
We need a Radio/BBC Wessex down here…and strike out for independence. Free tuition for pasty bakers…Scots and Welsh to be charged as much as their own body weight in griddle scones/Irn Bru.
Will rally under the Wessex Flag at Tolpuddle…I`m sure Vaz etal would cherish our multicultural diversity and victim stories.
My point then-the BBCs writ shouldn`t run unless the areas are coherent and historical. The Solent is for Southampton etc…not for Dorset.
We are all Wurzels now!
BBC South seems to cover Dorset in the west, Brighton in the East and Banbury in the north. Ridiculous.
BBC local radio & tv are incredibly amateurish and we really have no need for them as there are loads of local commercial stations. In fact, do we even need the BBC?
Well how about the guy on radio 4 who tries to speak in an overly posh and extremely perculiar voice while mixing up his words and sentences. When he first read the shipping forecast he would say ” gouda” for good. I am sure there would be many a sailor out on the high seas straining to listen to the weather conditions on the radio and thinking ” what the **** is he talking about !”
Yeah, the “ship-sister” tongue-twister was good. I thought, some kind of right-on navy girlie boat?
The news went on to give John Denham (MP Lab) airtime to kick the Council (Tory?) for trying to balance their books. Apparently they have a hole on their budget. I wonder why John. Nothing to do with the national coffers being empty after 13 years eh?
Local BBC is exactly the same as National BBC. Biased, but at a local level.
The whole pointless station went on to do a piece on Social Networking (shouldn’t that be ” not working”?) at the University of Bournemouth. Couldn’t think of any reason to listen.
The speech-impediment seems one of the station’s lesser problems.
The true utter utter pointlessness of BBC local radio was revealed to me during the bad snow last winter (that seems to have gone down the memory hole) when I tuned in to find out what public transport was actually running. Instead I found a “DJ” who was unwilling to alter his morning shows endless diet of 2nd rate pop drivel and “amusing” jokes. Once every 30 minutes the newreader would give the current status of public transport but I soon realised all she was doing was reading out the Twitter feeds and web pages of the local bus companies. After that I switched the rubbish off and got far better information from my laptop.
The best course of action would be to close down Beeb local radio , sell of the frequencies in the cities and donate them to community groups in the countryside who fancy having a crack at running a local news station.
I haven’t heard it and could play the ‘poor girl’ card but I believe Chuffer has a point. Years ago the BBC was ALL about well read, well pronounced etc Oxbridge plum-in-mouth accents. These voices made the BBC famous and respected and “British”. The recent (few decades) dumbing down has led to a rush for ANY whiney twang that could be fobbed onto the public as “regional”: when I last used to live in the UK I have turned off the radio more than a few times because the host/DJ/whatever had such an annoying voice: a normal English voice is probably in a minority now (I’m generalising but you get my drift)
A few years ago on BBC Radio York, some half-wit made reference to Ayrton Senna’s chances of winning the Monaco GP.
They weren’t good, as he was dead at the time, great driver but still dead.
Oh ! but she’s still alive and still employed by BBC York, rehearsing no doubt how to pronounce “I don’t know what I am talking about”.
If she had a stammer it would be an attribute during the imparting of her wisdom to the unfortunate souls in earshot of a radio in North Yorkshire.
Is Wadio Solent made of people?
If I had my way, all radio presenters would sound like Tenesseean opera singers.
When I’m King Chuffer I, this is how BBC newsreaders will speak:
What about Brian Sewell?
hard to believe that cigarette smoking might have been permissable so close to an opened petrol pump even back then – least of all in a BP ad! Could being in b&w have something to do with it? I don’t remember this ad being on Channel 9 though, whereas the Esso sign meant happy motoring, murray mints were too good to hurry mints, and it was time to light a red and white are all vivid memories.
Does anyone listen to Radio Solent I used to live in Hythe (Hants) and never did. Mind you are they as bad as Eno http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eno_Eruotor
See “reads” the weather on North West tonight…oh dear.
CJ!
This is the Radio Solent vote calling!
true it is crap here-but without Stuart Hall, North West is awful too!
But the Nrth East one is the worst I`ve experienced so far…maybe there`s an award to be had here for the worst local BBC service.
As we all know there really aren`t enough award ceremonies for these undervalued members of the “gaysious community”.
New word of the day for Evan,Sandi and the other wind-trapped Beeboids!
CJ!
Very rare for me to revisit, but I thought Eno was the green polymath who does all the adverts and spits tea tree oil at Bryan Ferry!
What a great name-is she some transformer/dinosaur hybrid with lame and a ponytail hunched over a synth?…
maybe worth a visit to the edge of BBC North West this summer…a potential successor to the lamented Daniel Corbett!
I think this article is unfair, personally I say all credit to anyone who is prepared to be the ‘voice’ of a programme and suffers from an impediment. In my opinion this is has nothing to do with the BBC and is instead the sort of article I expect to see in the guardian.
This site is a superb forum in highlighting the bias of the BBC, however in this case, the nasty taste of the article does the site no credit (imho).
Anyway, Solent folk will all have to speak French only soon.
See Littlejohn’s map:
It’s Rumpy Pumpy’s Flying Circus!
By Richard Littlejohn
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2008898/The-Arc-Manche-Its-Rumpy-Pumpys-Flying-Circus.html#ixzz1QzNMwNNw
Presumably then maths teachers should be recruted among the mathematically challenged?
What About Dalton Adebayo? (Radio 5 Up allnight) definite and very irritating speech impediment. I can not listen when he is on.