Never mind the jollux...

Jeremy Clarkson now appears on Call My Bluff

5 April 2012

And today, for those of you planning to tour Europe by car this summer, here are some vital German motoring terms that may help to get you out of a scrape.

The German word for bonnet is "Pullnob und Knucklechopper", indicators are "die Blinkenleiten-ticken-tocken", and if you need to describe a puncture, the correct phrase is "die Phlattazfahrtz".

A learner driver translates as "die Twatten mit Elplatz", and if he is driving an estate car, you refer to that as " Bagdserriinmfurschagginkauto".

Windscreen wipers are known as "Der Flippenflappenmuchken Schpredden Sticken", a breathalyser is "die Puffinten fur Pistenarsen", and most importantly of all, seat belts are commonly referred to as "der Klunkenklikker Frauleintrapper".

The above diatribe appears in today's column in honour of Jeremy Clarkson, who yesterday brought his own imitable blend of xenophobia and technophobia to the new series of Call My Bluff (BBC1).

The Incredible Sulk (as he's known in the biz) has made a career out of whining about gadgets, and gratuitously insulting just about anybody who isn't English (so long as they're of a whitish hue, because his chauvinism is nervously tempered by pusillanimity), and the studio was soon awash with boorish sniping at easy targets, such as Scottish cooking ("that's an oxymoron") and accidentprone home computers.

When it began in 1965, television's longest-running word game considered itself refined, elegant, and erudite (just like the newly-launched BBC2 channel on which it was then broadcast, in a prime time slot), but we live now in coarser times, where even the hallowed recesses of the complete OED are polluted by Little Englander values.

Even so, Clarkson's dismissive swipes at "podgy, fleshy men" did seem a bit rich, coming as they did from a man with a face that has lunched a thousand chips, and whose blood type is Dolmio.

Housed in a set that resembled a B&Q discontinuedline bathroom, yesterday's edition evinced several weaknesses, but also some redeeming strengths.

As a host, the bland autocutie, Fiona Bruce, gave the impression of being in office but not in power, and her opening remark that "this is the game that could turn you into a Simple Simon, a Proper Charlie, or a very Silly Billy" was not so much a piece of banter as a plaintive cry for some urgent help from a halfdecent script writer.

However, team captain Rod Liddle is proving to be a likeable and acerbic TV performer, and he acts as a perfect foil to the fitfully brilliant but infuriatingly inconsistent Alan Coren.

Coren, of course, has been delighting and amusing audiences now for almost 30 years. Only trouble is, he's been in the business for more than 40. As hopshackle and jollux gave way to kangri and spanghew, I found myself idly trying to guess from the visual clues alone (in a Sherlock Holmesian sort of a way) just when the show had been recorded.

About March, I finally decided, because guest Leslie Ash showed no sign of the serious injury she suffered when she fell out of bed in April (an incident that led to her husband being arrested), but was proudly displaying a pair of lips that ought, by rights, to have had the legend "inflate to 20 psi" embossed on them.

By the time I'd refocused on the action, the teams were on to dulosis and minitabund, and Alan Coren was revealing to viewers that his old man really was a dustman, who had even worn a dustman's hat (although no cor blimey trousers were mentioned).

Having read some of the self-serving dross that his various of f --spring have foisted onto the long-suffering public in recent years, I can only observe that the entire nepotistical clan of Corens seem determined to continue the family tradition of dealing in waste matter.

Although the format originated in the US, Call My Bluff is a quintessentially British programme that isn't afraid of being clever, but currently feels as though it's idling on just one cylinder.

Controllers nowadays seem petrified of scheduling intelligent shows during prime time, but I for one would love to see this one back on BBC2 in a high-profile mid-evening slot, preferably hosted once more by the razor-sharp Robert Robinson (I doubt if he'd jump at the offer, but as he still presides magisterially over Brain of Britain on Radio 4 each year, why has TV dispensed with his peerlessly sardonic wit, in favour of younger but emptier vessels?).

There aren't nearly enough word-based programmes on TV at present, which is why I'm currently trying to develop one, based on an old Washington Post quiz, in which readers were invited to alter an existing word by adding or adjusting just one letter, then giving it a new definition.

"Intaxication"-was my favourite entry ("euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realise it was your money to start with"), along with "Giraffiti" ("vandalism spraypainted very very high"), but I claim the prize for one of my own. "Ignoranus: a person who is both stupid and an arsehole." Which brings me back to Mr Clarkson. Maybe it'll end up in the OED.

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Never mind the jollux...

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