Friday, June 8, 2007

Rhymes with 'cheese'?

Early start this morning, the 0700 QF409 from Sydney to Melb. They showed the morning news on the plane, and the lead item was about Paris Hilton being released from prison after three days. I'm vaguely appalled that this is leading the news but I've given up - there are some things I'm just going to have to go along with.

But what was really inexcusable was that the segment had been lifted from some british news show (not BBC - I'm guessing ITV or Skynews) and the 'reporter' did that thing that english people often do. She pronounced the last syllable of Los Angeles as though it rhymed with 'cheese'. It's possible she's never been there, and that she's in fact sitting in a studio in, say, Croydon, and just making it up as she goes along. But it's also quite possible that she's been to LA many times and really should know better. Brits always like to make fun of how guileless and ill-adapted the americans are (they don't know that Chalmondsley is pronounced 'Chumley', that sort of thing, but how often do you ever run across Chalmondsley?) ABC radio tonight they had a segment about 'why should we care about Paris Hilton?' done in a vaguey ironic way so that you could get a real troughful of Paris gossip while at the same time feeling a bit above it all. They had some clown on from the BBC and of course he didn't say it right.

A high point of this sort of thing was when Nicole Kidman's sister used to do the showbusiness gossip show thing on Qantas in-flight. You have to guess she's been to LA more times than I've had hot dinners, but she still couldn't say it right.

1 comment:

T said...

well there is Chum Darvall at Deutsche Bank of course here in Sydney !