Something Rhymes with Purple - Literally...

Episode Date: July 14, 2020

This week we officially became the Best Entertainment Podcast of the year at the British Podcast Awards. Thank you so much to all the Purple People who listen… you make this show what it is and we couldn’t do it without you. But to provide some balance to all this happiness, this week we’re talking about those linguistic tics that really get on our wick. I mean, you know, you could care less, but we’ll give it 100%, so… As well as swapping their language bugbears, Susie offers us three words for the week, Gyles’ grandson has slipped us a couple of jokes, and we find out about Yul Brynner’s aversion to aftershave… A Somethin’ Else production. Susie’s trio: Salvo: an intentionally bad excuse Sequacious: prone to slavishly following the opinions of others Toe-cover: a present that is both useless and cheap. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up y'all it's your man Mark Strong Strizzy and your girl Jem the Jem of all Jems and we're hosting Olympic FOMO your essential recap podcast of the 2024 Olympic Games in 20 minutes or less every day we'll be going behind the scenes for all the wins

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with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main We'll see you next time. Annex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to Something Rhymes with Purple. And we are particularly thrilled today because we have some news, in case you haven't caught it it that this very podcast has won a very special award. I may not sound thrilled but I do actually have a few goosebumps because it's very rare in my life

to have ever won anything. So Giles, hello, are you as thrilled as me? I'm thrilled, overwhelmed actually. We have been chosen as the best entertainment podcast of the year. And given the competition, I mean, literally hundreds getting to the finals, thousands entering, it's a very crowded world now, the world of podcasts. To be the best entertainment podcast is fantastic. So we do thank them. We're very thrilled. The prize, I should add, is merely the honour and a very nice faux onyx trophy, which is lovely to have. And there were balloons and there was... Party hats.

Party hats. Yes, I got a whole box. We were there virtually, weren't we? I had a whole box. I mean, it really does mean a lot, not just to win it, but to be... No matter what you say at these events, they do sound very cheesy. It's sort of like the Oscars where they focus on the faces of the losers as the winner is announced. But genuinely, I was so chuffed because Carol Vordman and Richard Whiteley,

who, as you know, Giles, presented Countdown for a very long time, the show that you and I have worked on. And the joke was, we never win an award. So they would go regularly to, you know, those starry TV nights and never come back with anything. So in my head, this is sort of for Richard and Carol, because yes, we finally won something. Yay, we've won something. Anyway, the real winners, I thank you for making it possible, are the Purple People. Because if no one was listening, we wouldn't have won a prize. And we've now got to earn the prize we've won. We've done, I don't know, 60, nearly 70 episodes of this.

And we're just beginning to scratch the surface. If you're new to us, if you've come to this podcast because you've heard, oh, this is apparently the best entertainment podcast there is. It's actually a podcast all about words and language. We celebrate the English language. We explore it. I burble on, and then Susie tells us what we're talking about. Literally, she explains what's what,

which is fantastic. We thought this week we'd talk about things that get on our wick, because I remember you telling me what that was. And one of the things that gets on my wick is I can never remember what the origin of getting your wick is. Yes. The reason that I thought this would be a good subject is because, do you remember a while back we had a feature that basically we asked people to send in their suggestions for things that would like to banish forever. It was a bit like the Room 101 of linguistics. And we had so many responses to that. You know, we had the um and the ah that I am constantly giving you, as I just did. We had so at the beginning of a sentence, we had going forward, all the kind of usual jargon and some really interesting ones too. And I thought it would be lovely to revisit bugbears. And getting

on your wick, just to remind you, if you have forgotten, is rhyming slang for Hampton Wick, a place near London. Is it near London, Hampton Wick? Yes, it is. Okay. It's rhyming slang for Hampton Wick, a place near London. Is it near London, Hampton Wick? Yes, it is. I didn't know that. Okay. It's rhyming slang for prick. So basically, yes, it's a euphemism, let's say.

It's a euphemism. Getting on your wick is getting on your prick. Yes. Well, what's that got to do with being irritated? I think it should be getting on your Hampton, personally. But isn't that odd? Yes. It doesn't really make sense.

I mean, I can see if that's the origin of it, but why are you getting on somebody's wick? If we want to go down this particular route, the penis has been used as a substitute for so many different things. Often, you know, you'd call someone a prick, wouldn't you? I mean, most male insults are basically focused on that particular part of the anatomy.

So I guess that's where it is. I think it's pretty old as well. As ever, if there is anyone new listening, I have got in front of me the Oxford English Dictionary, my Bible, and I've got the online version, which is the most incredible thing. And oh my goodness, there's so many definitions of WIC. You carry on, Giles.

I'm going to look up getting on your WIC. We both follow Twitter, Susie. We're both on Twitter. We're both on Twitter and we have followers and we follow other people on Twitter. And there was an amusing game this week, speaking of penises, as you were, about if you had to name your private parts and you had to name them after the last television programme

that you watched, what would your private parts be called? Yours is going to be way funnier than mine. I tried a Netflix series called You. I couldn't really get into it, but that would be it. That's quite funny. You and you can't get into it. That really sums her up, doesn't it? Yes. Mine genuinely was, I read this, I thought all good grief, Gogglebox. Oh oh that's brilliant how is your box the series is going very well um in fact i think i'm doing my last one this coming friday i've been doing it with my friend maureen lipman she was the most funny person in the world now i can tell you something that really got on your wick during that program which was the word

garbology do you remember you were watchingdown and that came up and you said, that is a rubbish word without, well, it probably was with full pun intended. You didn't like it at all. It goes back to the 1940s. That's what amazed me because I looked it up in the dictionary and it was there. And I thought it was some newfangled word that we were relying, means the study of rubbish, refuse. It's either the study of it for a sort of anthropological, archaeological reason, or it can humorously just mean silly terminology or just nonsense or rubbish. So if something is, do you want to remember one of my trios was quisquilius, which is a much more beautiful word for something that makes no sense whatsoever

and is totally rubbish and is the perfect put medown for someone who's never going to understand it. So if someone said, did you like my speech? You can say it was really quisquillious. And it means total, yeah, garbage. So I prefer that one. Very good. Now, what's gone on your wick this week, in the last seven days since we last chatted?

Well, there has been a lot on social media about the word irregardless. So Merriam-Webster Dictionaries, who I respect hugely, one of the big American dictionary publishers who has some fantastic lexicographers working for them, basically verified the fact that irregardless was in their dictionary. And this caused a massive outcry of people saying, you know, it's a total nonsense word. It's actually, you know, negating regardless. And so it is actually wrong on so many levels. And people, just people did not like it at all. And they certainly didn't like the fact that the dictionary, which is seen as the traditional arbiter of what's right and what's wrong, was somehow endorsing it.

And of course, the reason I loved it is it got the whole discussion going again as to what dictionaries are actually for. Are they there to endorse and approve or are they there to record? And of course, the answer is in a society where English and our language is a democracy, it is there to record. Absolutely. And because it's used so much that they've put it in. This is so important that people should understand that.

Dictionaries do not sit in judgment. They are there, as it were, to serve the public by giving you words, a definition of how they were used, when they were used. That's it. They don't say it's a good word or it's a bad word. It exists. We've had all this this week, too, with the game of Scrabble.

I'm the founder of the National Scrabble Championships. I founded them 50 years ago, and I'm the president of the British Association of Scrabble. I'm the founder of the National Scrabble Championships. I founded them 50 years ago, and I'm the president of the British Association of Scrabble Players. And there are some Scrabble enthusiasts who say, oh, we should take these words out of the dictionary. They're not suitable words to play at Scrabble. One of the words being wrinklies, for example, W-R-I-N-K-L-I-E-S, because it's disrespectful to people like myself of riper years who have wrinkles. We can't use wrinklies. Well, all I say is it still should be in the dictionary because we need to know if you're, you know, a hundred years from now, you're reading a text and you read about wrinklies, you might not know what it meant. You want to be able to look

it up in the dictionary and find what it meant in 2020. That doesn't mean to say you need to use it when playing Scrabble. Just because it's in the dictionary doesn't mean to say you should be using it. Well, this is where usage notes come in, you know, because what Merriam-Webster do have and what Oxford dictionaries have and many dictionary makers have is, you know, they will give the entry and then they will have a usage note. And in their usage note, Merriam-Webster very clearly say use regardless instead, because it's a long way from winning acceptance as standard English. And what people are doing is they're putting together, by the way, irrespective and regardless and coming up with a new blend.

But, you know, no one really complains much about biweekly being in the dictionary, even though it can mean two different things or inflammable, which people get wrong. You know, there's not always logic to the way language moves, because quite often we make mistakes along the way. So, to conclude, irregardless exists, but preferably use regardless, it means the same thing. Exactly. Can I offer you a few other things that I find quite irritating at the moment? Please do. you a few other things that I find quite irritating at the moment. People verbing things.

Yes. We've been very lucky to be meddled by getting an award. Yes. You've been meddled. What do you feel about that? It does irritate me rather. Yes, I'm with you. I mean, everybody's got their own personal, well, least favourites, I would say. I don't mind verbing per se, because we have done it forever. You have to remember that Shakespeare was a great verber. He was always turning nouns into verbs. So he would say, Grace, we talked about this, I think, Grace me no Grace, nor Uncle me no Uncle. And Keats too loved turning nouns into verbs. So the one I always give is he would

talk about turtles passioning their voices. So people have done this for a very, very long time. And to be honest, they had their critics as well. I mean, Shakespeare, as you know, had plenty of critics that didn't like the way he mucked around with language. So it's not an exclusively American thing by any means. Most of the ones that we like to blame on the North Americans actually began with us. So I don't mind it, but of course there are some of them that I just don't like. I mean, it works. Nouning is another thing I don't like. I don't really like when people talk about a disconnect,

but I've got really used to it now. You know, it happens all the time. It's the way language moves on. There will be some examples that we don't happen to like, but that's fine. I mean, the sort of thing i find irritating is when people say can i get when they mean may i have we we talk i think we talked a little bit about when we had our our episode which people can still get um sorry to use get again uh from our archive if they want to listen to the episode in which we talk very much

about north american english and how in my view it, it's very unfairly treated because people tend to hate it. British speakers tend to hate it. But Shakespeare used can I get in fairly similar formulations, although he obviously wasn't asking for a cappuccino. So, again, it's not a particularly new request. I agree it's quite ugly, but, you know, it's just part of slang and slang will come and go and then come back again. Because technically why can I get is incorrect when you're asking

for a cappuccino is, yes, you can, of course you can get a cappuccino, but in fact, you are requesting one from the person who's going to be serving you. So you're asking, in fact, may I have, would you be kind enough to give me, not can I get. But then the answer to may I have is the same. Yes, you can, because you're in a coffee shop. Do you not think? I suppose so. Of course, what I say is, would you be so kind? I would be delighted if you would do me the honour of serving me with one of your delicious cappuccinos.

Good God, £4.50. I'm just looking to see the earliest examples of things like, can I get you anything? Can I get some tea? Can I get some closure? Lots of instances in the OED. They're all around the 1990s, 2000s so far. But, you know, I honestly don't think it's exclusively American. Oh, here we go.

One from 1945. So, yes, I bet I can trace it back to Shakespeare if I look hard enough. What do you make of the phrase, I could care less? Well, this is another one. I could care less. This is another one over which people have a huge debate. The dictionary treat the phrases couldn't care less and could care less as synonymous, meaning not concerned or interested at all. Obviously, the more obvious phrase, grammatically speaking, is couldn't care less. But it's been confused for so long that both go in the dictionary. Couldn't care less, no one's quite sure where that comes from.

It's speculated that it comes from American soldiers returning from World War II. And they brought it back to America from British shores, because it does seem to be British. But could care less basically sticks in the gullet because people think it means the opposite of what it purports to mean. So the person who says I could care less on the face of it is saying, yes, I could possibly care less deeply about this matter than I do. And so therefore, it's not the worst, you know, it's not the worst kind of degree. I don't like it. I would never use it. Again, look at the usage note, but it's in the dictionary because people confuse it all the time.

Curiously, since beginning to do this podcast now over a year, I've become much more liberal and accepting, thanks to you. And I'm also, for example, when I'm watching television, I'm going with the flow. I'm currently watching a Canadian television series called Schitt's Creek. Do you know about this? No. Have you heard about this? No, I'm glad that didn't come up with what do you call your private parts? It's hilarious. It's hilarious. It's made in Canada with a very famous Canadian family of comedy actors starring in it. It's a family show. And essentially, the essence of the idea, it's a hugely. Combine the Kardashians and the Trumps, and it's even bigger than that. And in episode one, they lose everything. They are reduced to, they have nothing. They've been defrauded.

They've got nothing left. Except 30 years ago, the father, as a joke, bought a small town, a tiny American town in Hicksville called Schitt's Creek. Just because of the amusing name. So they end up in Schitt's Creek. And it's called Schitt's Creek. So that's a very good metaphor for being on the down and out, isn't it? And there's a family there called the Schitts, S-C-H-I-T-T. And indeed, the present Schitt is the local man. He's a weirdo. And so it's this family in Schitt's Creek. It's hilarious. But the point is, there are middle-aged parents and then there are the kids. And the two kids are speaking in modern North Americanese. And the language they use is completely gripping to me.

And I love it. And I mean to have a notebook by me so I can note down some of the phrases that they use. But the point is, it's where you could hear phrases like, I could care less. You actually think, spoken in the right way by the son of the household, who is by definition pansexual, by self-definition, to hear this fellow in a rather camp way talking like this, it's hilarious. So I am now embracing and becoming much, much more relaxed. I like this. I also stupidly like the fact that up shit creek without a paddle is, of course, already a metaphor. So excuse me for being stupid about that. Now, I am hanging much looser about terms of phrase, but I still get irritated about incorrect pronunciation.

Do you say mischievous or mischievous? Oh, my goodness. OK. In fact, we ought to take a break because this is such a big subject. Should we return to it once we've had a quick break? Yeah, then I want to ask you about et cetera. Or is it et cetera? That's my problem.

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Welcome back to Something Rhymes with Purple, where Giles just mentioned one thing that gets on his wick is pronunciation, or mispronunciations, I guess. He mentioned, et cetera. Can I put my hands up, Giles? You can see on our Zoom call, I'm putting my hands up because I regularly get told by viewers of Countdown that I often say et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And it's true. When I listen back to myself, I do. It should be et cetera, but it's much harder to say, I find. It should be et cetera, because it's a Latin phrase, et cetera, et being and, et cetera being other things. Yes, exactly. It's sort of minutes and so on.

And indeed, people who remember the film of The King and I will remember Yul Brynner correctly going et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's it. Have I ever told you about how I met Yul Brynner? No. He asked me about Liverpool and football in Liverpool. He'd been offered some vast fee to go and promote some fragrance, some perfume up in Liverpool.

And eventually he turned it down. In fact, his agent said he can't do it because Yul never walk alone. Did you really meet him? I did meet him. I'll tell you about that. It's quite a long story. So I think we'll need a full episode to tell you about that. We'll have the Yul Brynner episode. Okay. So yeah, so et cetera, definitely not. I ticked myself off for that one. I don't say asterisk, but a lot of people do, which is in a similar mould, isn't it asterisk and also the expresso when people it's espresso isn't it it's espresso because it's coffee that is pressed out um asterisk what is the origin of asterisk well it means little star so it's linked to the aster that you'll find in asteroid and

astronaut the sailor of the stars stars are are everywhere in English. I love it. Disaster, Izzy, if you remember, which is the bad alignment of the stars. That's how it was originally thought of. Is there a rule on mischievous versus mischievous? Well, English has no rules, but the standard is still mischievous. But as I have said to you on numerous occasions, the young are definitely preferring mischievous. It doesn't matter how often I pick my own daughter up, she's still, here's mischievous even from her teachers, to be honest, who are, you know, in their 20s quite often.

So if I ask during my tour, when I used to do, you know, before the theatre's very sadly closed, when I used to do my shows, I would ask the audience to raise their hands according to how they pronounce mischievous. And it definitely, there was a clear, there was a clear kind of North-South divide, my shows, I would ask the audience to raise their hands according to how they pronounce mischievous. And it definitely, there was a clear, there was a clear kind of North-South divide, but also very much a generational divide too. How do you spell mischievous? M-I-S-C-H-I-E-V-O-U-S. So it is mischievous. People say mischievous, thinking incorrectly. There's a second I there. Well,

you know why? This explains so many of our mispronunciations. It's because people are rhyming it with devious. People are also talking about grievous bodily harm. Very often when we do mispronounce things, we are following the pattern set by another word. So if you take nuclear, which the Simpsons always make fun of, a nuclear option, we are actually the cular bit, we are somehow matching with things like molecular. And it does actually make it slightly easier to say and circular and muscular, you know, that kind of thing, cellular. So we do, it kind of might appease certain people for whom this really greats if you understand why people are doing it.

Likewise, the station in London, quite a few people, in one poll, 33% of people mispronounced St. Pancras as, guess what, St. Pancreas. Oh, I can see that. Yes. St. Pancras was a delightful saint, you know. Was he? I didn't know much about St. Pancras. I think he was a child saint, and he may be the patron saint of children. I read up on it once. St. Ancrus, love his arch.

Be specific, pacifically. Pacifically, yes. I really get some people's nose. It does because it's incorrect, isn't it? It's totally incorrect. I mean, pacifically means being like the ocean, doesn't it? That's very true. But then, you know, there are cases, not that one,

but where we align words, particularly foreign words that we can't really pronounce, with our more kind of familiar pronunciation. So how would you pronounce, listen to how I'm going to spell this, B-R-U-S-C-H-E-T-T-A. Bruschetta. Well done.

So a lot of people say bruschetta because the C-H is how we would pronounce it in English. Bruschetta. Oh, so you ask for a bottle of Chianti. Chianti. What about, I don't know if you have any of this sauce in your fridge or in your cupboards. C-H-I-P-O-T-L-E. Chipotle. It's Chipotle.

Chipotle. Chipotle. I said Chipotle. Oh, dear me. I mean, you know, it's quite difficult for us. Let's face it. We have so many foreign imports and that's the beauty of English. Let we never be without foreign imports. But, you know, we can't always pronounce them. And you and I now become Mr. and Mrs. Tolerant. But there are some people who are not going to be so tolerant. We have had an interesting communication from Jeff Jodrell, and he's emailed to air his grievances with people who start the sentence, any sentence, with, I mean, and then end the sentence with,

so. I mean, this, that, and the other, and whatever they're going to say, and then so. That's what irritates him. I mean, that's what irritates him, so. I mean, this, that and the other, and whatever they're going to say, and then so. That's what irritates him. I mean, that's what irritates him, so. I don't think I've spotted that so much, but I famously, I don't think we talked about this during the American English episodes, but a friend of mine, Mark Mason, who writes about language sometimes for The Spectator magazine said, Susie, have you noticed that everyone is beginning to start their sentences with so, or particularly an answer to a question with so? So this was about a decade ago. And I just wrote back and said, nah, not seeing this.

I'm sure it would be a fly by night. And of course, it became the big bugbear of the age, didn't it? Because it really is annoying. And I have to say, this one is North American. We think it came from Silicon Valley. As a kind of self-assertion, I think people find or believe it makes them sound more confident. These words are really fillers. And I think we did an episode some time ago called Twazzy.

You can go to wherever you find your podcast, and there's a kind of back catalogue of 60 or more of these. And you can discover where we've talked about these subjects before. One more I want to, before we get to other correspondence, people who say literally when they don't mean literally. You know, that's in the dictionary as well. Oh, is it? People hate it. Yes, the figurative use of literally. I mean, it's a bit crazy, but what are we doing once again?

What does literal actually mean? Okay, I'm going to give you the definitions now. Literal in its earliest form meant relating to a letter. So it actually, in the figurative sense, it means a literal, well, sorry, forget that figurative bit. That just muddies the waters. It means in a literal, exact or actual sense, i.e. not figuratively. figuratively, okay? But the OED says now, used to indicate that some metaphorical or hyperbolical expression is to be taken in the strongest admissible sense, as in virtually or completely, utterly, absolutely. Now one of the most common uses, although often considered irregular in

standard English since it reverses the original sense of literally. But do you know the earliest date at which it has been used figuratively? 1769. Wow. I literally can't believe that. 1769. 1769 is the OED's first record of literally being used non-literally. Well, there you are.

of literally being used non-literally. Well, there you are. If you have bugbears that you want to share with us, and in fact, if you want Susie to sit in judgment on these, all you need to do is get in touch with us. You can tweet us or email us at purple at something else dot com. And that's something without a G. Purple at something else dot com. And lots of people have been in touch.

Oh, the Mondegreens. The Mondegreens. Oh, we loved those. They have provoked a lot of correspondence. Yes. A couple of weeks ago, we were discussing egg corns and Mondegreens, and people have been sending in some brilliant ones. I've got a couple here. I'm sure you've got a couple. One from Bob Statton, I think it is, as in Statton Island. He's written in to tell us that his Mondegreen is from the classic police song,

So Lonely, which to this day, he says, only ever sounds like Sue Lawley in the repeated chorus. She was very much a TV regular around the time it was a hit. Yeah, I can imagine. I can see that one, actually. I used to love that song. Okay, this is from Lex Loisides. Do i pronounce that lex lex lois anyway not sure if that's a real name but if it is a real name then hats off because it is brilliant um greeting charles and susie for years our second oldest daughter thought that the song in the sound of music so long farewell that the fun trap children were singing was so long farewell,

our feet are saying goodbye as they gradually marched out. Instead, of course, of our feet are saying goodbye. So I love that. Yeah, that's brilliant. Oh, that's fantastic. That's a really good one. And then Paul Bradbury wrote to us saying a school friend of his told him that his sister had misheard the Oasis lyric. I met my maker and made him cry, from the song Do You Know What I Mean, as I met John Major and made him cry. Ever made John Major cry, Giles? I think you knew our

previous prime minister. I did because I served in his government in the 1990s. I was a member of parliament and I was in the government of John Major for several years. I liked him very much. was in the government of John Major for several years. I liked him very much. I did make him weep on one occasion, more with frustration and anger than anything else. It was at the time, I remember the night vividly. As you will recall, one of John Major's great achievements was to begin what became the Anglo-Irish peace process that was then continued by Tony Blair, the end of the 1990s. And it was a real achievement, the bringing together of all sides in Northern Ireland to create what has been a marvellous situation there, a much improved situation there now for two and more decades. Anyway, the government had been in secret negotiations with the different

sides, and they were going to announce this on, shall we say, a Thursday morning. And on the Wednesday night at the House of Commons, John Major summoned ministers to his room because as well as having offices at 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister also has a suite of offices in the Palace of Westminster. So we went into the Prime Minister's room. There were so many of us, it was, you know, most of the government. He sat at the table to tell us about these tense negotiations. And I was standing against a wall, and it's all lovely wood panelling.

And he had just got to the most critical moment in his speech, persuading us, because there were some people who were frightened that maybe we were making too many concessions to one side or another in these Anglo-Irish negotiations. He was just getting to his key point when I leant back against this wood paneling, and it gave way behind me. And it turned out that it was a partition, a small door leading to the prime minister's lavatory. And just as he was making this very important statesman-like address, I landed, plop, in Mr. Major's loo.

He was in despair. He was in despair. Until you told me about this and the incident with the Stradivarius and the purple people and exactly what I'm talking about, I never had you down as a hapless person, but I'm going to think you are. No, well, it was. It was terrible.

Anyway, that's part of why. No one laughed, I'm assuming. Or did they? No, they didn't. I mean, it was just, I mean, it was, of course, comical because then I was with my bottom stuck in the loo seat,

my legs in the air. Is this a little bit of embellishment? No, and the very future of the British Isles was being discussed. There was the Prime Minister. It was about one in the morning. It was a nightmare. I was heaved out by a couple of whips and decorum was restored and indeed the peace process proceeded. But that was my contribution to Anglo-Irish history. Oh, and Susie, Simon Wadsworth has been in touch with a nice message. Hi, Giles and Susie, podcast is fantastic.

I listen to it at night before I go to sleep as it helps settle my mind. Well, because it could be, it just dozes off listening to you. Well, not to you, but to me. My wife and I are having a baby. Oh, that's marvellous. Congratulations. Yeah, look, if I may say so, Simon Wadsworth, get all the sleep you can while you can. He says here, my wife and I are having a baby in a couple of days. So by the time you hear this, Simon, you and your wife will have had the baby. We hope all went well. We say congratulations. And we think that Giles and Susie are rather nice names. Anyway, he says, I'm wanting to read poems to our daughter, Emmy. Oh, she's going to be called Emmy after she's

born. E-M-M-I-E, lovely name, actually. Do you have a poetry book or two you can recommend other than your own? Ha ha. It doesn't have to be a children's poetry book. That's because maybe he's weary of hearing me refer to Dancing by the Light of the Moon, my anthology of poems to learn by heart, more than 300 of them. What would you recommend? Just going to what I used to read to mine. I love Julia Donaldson's books. They are, I mean, there's a book called The Snail and the Whale. Do you know that one?

Do your grandchildren have that one? Yeah, and it's just just it's so lyrical and it's so beautiful when you read it out loud and she actually had when she was children's laureate i think she edited a collection that was called poems to perform and it's essentially it's performance poetry but it's it's poetry that's designed to be read out loud. And there are some wonderful things in there. There's a lovely one by Tony Mitten, I think it is called Voices of Water, and it's full of onomatopoeia. And it would just be a lovely one, I think, to hold a baby's attention, just kind of aurally and, you know, just picking things up that way. So I think that would be a lovely one. I know when they're really young, they love black and white books. It's more a kind of visual thing. I work with Rachel,

as you know, Rachel Riley, who's recently had a baby and her Maven was totally obsessed with a little book that I bought her, which was a black and white picture book. And it's just something about that black and white contrast that really captivates them. But for reading, I would recommend that one, Poems to Perform. And it was a classic collection chosen by Julia Donaldson. This will intrigue you, I hope, and your wife, Simon. You can actually read any poetry at all to Emmy and she will benefit from it. It doesn't necessarily need to be poems that she understands.

She's a very small baby now, isn't she? Only a few days old. But you could read her, believe it or not, Shakespeare, Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, anything that's got rhythm and rhyme. It's the rhythm and rhyme that children seem to enjoy. It's the boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Reading, and people think this is extraordinary, why read Shakespeare to a baby? But of course, the iambic pentameter, which much of Shakespeare is written, is, it is the beat of your heart. That's the rhythm of it. And there's lots of research that shows speaking rhythmical poetry to small children

before they're born and after they're born will indeed help them with their language skills. It'll help them to speak sooner and better, read sooner and better, write sooner and better. So it doesn't much matter. If you want a really good collection, I think, of children's verse, there's a wonderful traditional book created by the Opie family. Do you know the Opies, Peter and Iona Opie? I was only talking to Lawrence, our producer, about the Opies the other day because their work, I think we should dedicate a whole programme to... I would love to. Children's folklore, children's nursery rhymes,

children's slang, because their collections are second to none. Well, they produce the Oxford book of children's verse. Yeah. And you can get it from any good library and borrow it from the library, invest in a copy yourself and just open it to any page.

So that's my advice. Maybe we should do, given Emmy has just been born, could we do a whole episode on nursery rhymes versus four small children? That's a lovely idea. Should we do that next week? Let's do that. And then let's keep the Opie's up our sleeve.

Although they did do also a brilliant collection of nursery rhymes. But I do think we should just honour their achievements they're both dead now but their family kind of you know keeps the tradition going of their amazing collection their son has the most amazing collection of packaging he is a packaging collector yes old mars bar wrappers amazing and a museum of them oh they are fascinating people. Of course, I'm so old, I actually knew them. Oh, did you? Oh, well, let's talk about them. But nursery rhymes for the next one will be lovely.

Nursery rhymes next week, immediately. What are your three words for this week? Okay, I think they just might be quite useful somewhere along the line. So if you want to offer an intentionally bad excuse that you know no one will believe, but you're just making a point, you can call it a salvo. So that's one of the kind of less common meanings of a salvo. Most people might know it as the kind of, you know, the burst of artillery or whatever.

But it's a kind of a consciously bad excuse. So if you really want to get fired, for example, you can give your boss a salvo um another one i tweeted quite recently i think is very useful with modern social media um we possibly have all been this ourselves always that you know people who are sequacious beautiful sounding word but it means prone to slavishly following the opinions of other people so without really thinking things through yourself, you might just be sequacious and just follow the crowd.

And finally, toe cover is a present to the all-given that is both useless and cheap. It could be cheap in the inexpensive sense, but I like the idea of a toe cover because presumably in the 19th century, that's what people used to put in stockings instead of socks. A toe cover. A toe cover.

I like it very much. Three good words there. Do you have a quote for us? Well, I've got a quote. I've got a couple of amusing poems. Oh, good. This is because I'm thinking of Emmy. These are a little bit too cheeky and too old for her, but I love this one.

Actually, this material is supplied to me by one of my grandchildren. I am a dog and you are a flower. I lift my leg up and give you a shower. And this is his other offering for this week. Thank you, Rory, for these. Roses are red, violets are blue. Most poems rhyme, but this one doesn't. Violets are blue. Most poems rhyme, but this one doesn't. Thank you, Rory. I like that one.

And thank you to the Purple people, as always, for listening in to us today. If you do want to get in touch, and we love it, as you can tell, because we read every single one and sometimes we do also get to read your questions out and hopefully answer them, you can tweet us or you can email us at purple at something else dot com. And the tweets is at Giles 1B. Is that right, Giles? That's it. Oh no, at Giles B1. At Giles B1, as in to be or not to be. I couldn't get my own name. Somebody was sitting on it. So I just took at Giles B1. OK, well, we all know it's you. And I am at Susie underscore Dent. So do please get in touch. And Something Rise With Purple is a Something Else production. It was produced by Lawrence Bassett with additional production from Steve Ackerman, Harriet Wells, Grace Laker and heavily, heavily.

Well, how can I describe him, Giles? Pursuit. Pursuit. Golly. I wonder what he calls his penis.