I go weak at the knees for a well-turned phrase

Feb 20 2008 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

‘LAURA, old bean,” hollered a colleague from his position safely out of elastic band firing range from my desk. “There’s something wrong with the Goggle.”

Welcome to the strange world of the Daily Post features department, where life seems to swing between an episode of Sex and the City (but with Primark heels instead of Manolo Blahniks) and the tales of Jeeves and Wooster.

I rather fancy myself as Jeeves, with his superior intelligence, dry wit and ability to mix the ultimate hangover cure, but I have a sneaky suspicion that certain colleagues see me more as a Wooster character – well-meaning but rather easy to bamboozle into doing exactly what they want me to.

The Goggle, of course, is Google, the internet search engine so successful that it has become its own verb. And I find myself eagerly going over to attempt to resolve the problem more quickly than the debonair butler managed to convince his charge to shave off his unfortunate moustache.

This is not because I desire to be a modern-day Good Samaritan (“Would you walk by on the other side when a baffled colleague cries?” the 21st-century version of the hymn could go), but because I find it hard to say no to anyone using old-fashioned language.

This, I am convinced, may be a delayed side effect of watching Colin Firth achieve courtly banter despite the risk of frostbite to his nether regions caused by leaping into ponds. This experience sent most TV-watching female members of the general British public into an Austenesque fit of the vapours but, as it was first broadcast when I was an impressionable teenager, I feel it may have had a deeper effect on my psyche.

There is something very disarming about a person who uses expressions that have fallen out of everyday speech.

It is hard not to break into a smile when someone who greets you with the phrase “What ho!”, whether it comes from a dashing young man in spats or the tramp who is currently invading your personal space on a park bench and smells suspiciously of trout.

I am certain that this is partially why Britannia ruled the waves so successfully once upon a time. Never mind the systematic oppression of hundreds of thousands of native people, surely a simple “toodle pip” would have caused fierce African tribes and aborigines alike to lay down their spears in bafflement.

There can surely be no coincidence that the British Empire began to crumble around the same time that we discarded our bowler hats and swapped our jazz age expressions for American-influenced slang.

Such language could have modern- day applications, too, such as coming up against an army of hoodies in the street.

Expecting the usual grumbling about the youth of today? Even the surliest of teenagers could not help but be taken aback by being greeted with a cheery “How’s everything, old fruit?”

I would declare that there ought to be a campaign to bring back these fine phrases if it wasn’t such an unoriginal idea.

A quick Goggle reveals that there are hundreds of like- minded people both in Britain and across the pond keen to restore the English language to its 1920s state.

Not the least of these are the women behind “Mookychick”, the “indie bible for babes with attitude”, who describe their reasons for embracing US jazz age slang as “If a girl was dancing well, you would tell her ‘Get hot! Get hot!’. And, Oh, man, that’s sexy. This is the kind of language we want to bring back.”

They recommend, as homework, swotting up on the films Mrs Dorothy Parker and the Vicious Circle, Bright Young Things and Bugsy Malone, but if you consider watching DVDs is far too modern then wind up your gramophone and have a go at some of their handy phrases: “Hey, baby, you've got sand/grit/moxy” (gumption), “Choice bit of calico” (an attractive woman, often a student), “panther sweat” (whisky).

So, next time someone floors me with a bit of old- fashioned charm, I’ll be less of a Dumb Dora.

lauradavis@dailypost.co.uk