Sub-Standard
'80s politico turned sports hack David Mellor dribbles out the bastardised version in an Evening Standard column:
Everywhere in the world there's a derisive phrase to describe a guy like UEFA president Michel Platini. Here, it's all mouth and no trousers; in Texas, all hat and no cattle; in Australia, the kind of guy who talks a good lay.
I suppose that, if by 'here' he means the dumber parts of London, he's right, but it's still depressing to see the meaningless bastardisation being used instead of the correct form. And any conjunction of Mellor and 'no trousers' just summons up horrible memories of that Chelsea-strip story.
Everywhere in the world there's a derisive phrase to describe a guy like UEFA president Michel Platini. Here, it's all mouth and no trousers; in Texas, all hat and no cattle; in Australia, the kind of guy who talks a good lay.
I suppose that, if by 'here' he means the dumber parts of London, he's right, but it's still depressing to see the meaningless bastardisation being used instead of the correct form. And any conjunction of Mellor and 'no trousers' just summons up horrible memories of that Chelsea-strip story.
posted by Tim Chapman at 3:05 pm
1 Comments:
I wouldn't hire Mr Mellor as a travel writer. "The kind of guy who talks a good lay" is a phrase I've never heard in over 30 years of living in Australia. It sounds American to me.
An accurate Australianism would be "fulla shit", as in the sentence "Dave Mellor's fulla shit."
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