Letters
Colespeak
Sir: Richard Ingrams's television column, so often the cry of simple, good sense in the wilderness, makes very enjoyable reading but lately his somewhat petty, overly per- sonal and obsessional prejudices against BBC newsmen for their lack of gravitas and so on are beginning to grate — and let him be warned: lay off John Cole!
To say that Cole is `scarcely intelligible' (28 May) is surely overdoing it? So his voice is different. Don't worry Mr Ingrams, you'll get used to it. What, anyway, is so perfect about the usual BBC male news- caster's voice? At the end of four years' so- journ in Australia in the Seventies I found all such voices sounded distinctly pansyish (room for personal prejudice there). Again, what's so wonderful about Southern Upper Class or Oxbridge? During the same Australian sojourn I found I had to strain forward in the classroom in order to hear taped TV educational broadcasts delivered by English lecturers swallowing their way through with these 'superior' accents. By comparison the American lecturers on their tapes with their stridently sonorous, manly tones were beautifully easy to listen to.
We in the regions, against hopeless odds, acquiesce in the gradual disappearance of our own forms of English (how I would fight if I could lay claim to an ancient language — Welsh, Gaelic!). We do, however, feel the need to see some justice done in regard to our right to influence the shape and course of the national language.
Alan Bays
70 Kingsway, South Shields, Tyne & Wear
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