Friday roundup: Apprentice, blogs, limos, Croydon

Time for this week's Friday roundup:

***

I'm a fan of The Apprentice, which is in its third series here in the UK, and watching it this week I was amused to hear one of the contestants referred to (by Voiceover Man) as a "trained barrister". I didn't know that you could become a barrister without training. What's that – you can't? Then surely just 'barrister' would have done. Or maybe he meant "trained as a barrister but not practising as one..."

Alan Sugar, silver fox

***

A couple of additions to our blogroll, both worth checking out: Copy-Editing Corner and Headup: the blog. Seems there are more blogging subs/copy editors than I realised... Talking of which, it might be time that I subdivided my blogroll as it's getting a little unwieldy.

***

Earlier in the week Apus wrote a post mentioning the origin of the word limousine, and the photo I downloaded from image library Morguefile to accompany the post turned out to have been taken by the author Emily Roesly. I thought it only fair that I gave her a plug...

***

A story in free paper Metro about a teenager who had difficulty ordering a taxi because of the slang she used made me laugh this morning.

***

And lastly, I had an email from my mum saying: "I know Posh and Becks called their son Brooklyn, but I've just come across a child called Croydon!"

It's not as unlikely as you might think, oh mother of mine – after all, Croydon has often been referred to as the "Manhattan of South London". On the other hand, David Bowie called it "complete concrete hell" and he's not often wrong...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

A minor and entirely irrelevant correction: the current UK series of the Apprentice is the fourth series, not the third.

Chris Frumplington said...

Are you absolutely sure that Voiceover Man didn't say 'barrista'? After all, reality TV is a bit of a comedown for a barrister (no disrespect intended to Alan Sugar, by the way); whereas it could be a good move for an ambitious Starbucks coffee grinder, couldn't it? Time to listen to those tapes again perhaps?

Roy said...

Croydon has often been referred to as the Manhattan of South London? By whom? And how often?
That seems about as likely as Stroud often being referred to as the San Francisco of Gloucestershire which, as far as I know, it never has.

JD (The Engine Room) said...

While Googling about Croydon, I came across a Your Local Guardian article asking: "Is East Putney set to become the Manhattan of Wandsworth?"

I think this is what Language Log calls a snowclone (albeit a rather rubbish one...)

JD (The Engine Room) said...

And Gareth, yes you're right about the Apprentice! I must have missed the first season entirely...