Pav’s Patch: E-ba-gum, don’t get yourself in a twist

ONE of the joys of the old BBC comedy series “Not the 9 o’clock News” was watching Pamela Stephenson take the mickey out of Angela Rippon.

For those of you not old enough to remember — does anyone under 50 read this column? — Angela became famous for showing off her legs on the Morecambe and Wise Christmas show.

But her real job was as a newsreader and she used to contort her face as she attempted to pronounce words like what they should be said.

She looked as though she’s just taken a spoonful of particularly sour medicine.

Robert Mugabe was Robert Moo-gabbeh while Joshua Nkomo was Joshua Unkummu. And did you realise that Robert Mugabe’s name spelled backwards is Trebor E-ba-gum?
I used to think it was a temporary aberration, but it seems to have returned. A woman on BBC News 24 calls Saudi Arabia Southi Arabia and Pakistan, Pakistharn. And then there was a man on the “Today” programme who called freed Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt, Ingreed Bethancoort.

Now what’s that all about? I’ve no idea which pronunciation is correct but why not use one that British people — your listeners — can manage.

I know the BBC has a pronunciation unit, and for all I know it may lay down the law, but I find it very funny whenever I hear people with orfully middle-class accents tying themselves in knots trying to reproduce words accurately.

I don’t want to go back to the days of Joe Mercer referring to Peely instead of Pele, or Malcolm Allison saying Joanne Cruff instead of Johan Cruyff, but do we really need to go to such extremes?

It’s especially evident in football, where certain types who’ve had a couple of German lessons will refer to Schalke 04 as nul-feer.

I’ve even been told that you shouldn’t call the top Serbian side Red Star Belgrade.

It’s hilarious watching people trying to say Crvena Zvezda — which they never can — especially as Belgrade people love to hear the club get its English name.

They even sell T-shirts in their own shop saying Red Star.

And if you think about it, if we’re going to take this to its logical conclusion, we would have to call Vienna Wien and Munich Munchen.

As for that new president of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, the new people are going to have some fun twisting their tongues round his name.