- Wordy part three - 5th February 2025
- Wordy part two - 4th February 2025
- Branded - 3rd February 2025
During 23 years with the BBC, and a 41 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, words have been all-important, and this is now underlined by a key phrase emerging today in political dialogue – ‘not a good/great look’…
Certain phrases appear to go in and out of fashion.
A few years ago it was ‘we’ll take a rain-check on that’, ‘we’ll put it on the back burner’ or ‘we’ll suck it and see’.
When people said those words what they actually meant was that your programme or story idea would NOT be commissioned, but Editors didn’t want to say that.
Today the fashionable thing to say appears to be ‘not a good/great look’, especially in politics.
It is a fail-safe phrase that can be applied to practically anything.
A Sky News piece analysing the arrest of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, six weeks after his short-lived attempt to impose martial law, declared: “The image of police officers having to use ladders to climb over rows of buses to try to get to a president who’s taken weeks to cooperate is not a good look internationally”.
Cancelling Latin lessons in state schools was “not a good look”, said one commentator.
Jailing people for inciting riots online was “not a good look“, according to Nigel Farage.
Rich farmers whining about inheritance tax was “not a great look”, proclaimed a radio host.
Scrapping the winter fuel allowance of up to £300 for pensioners was, a lobby group insisted, “not a good look”, and an MP used those words as well.
When Sir Keir Starmer sacked Sue Gray after only a few months as his Chief of Staff, that was also apparently ‘not a good look’.
After Ms Gray negotiated a severance pay package worth more than Sir Keir’s salary, that too was, it seems, ‘not a good look’.
But there are other ones which appear perfectly innocuous and you should be wary of.
If your boss asks to see you, and then tells you to ‘close the door’, worry BIG TIME!
The memories of Phil’s astonishing, decades long award-winning career in journalism (when the correct use of words was all-important) as he was gripped by the rare neurological disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A Good Story’. Order it now.
‘Wordy part three’ is tomorrow, where he looks at how now song lyrics are being examined, with the realisation dawning that they made sense all along!
