The pop star Sam Smith appears not only to have a magic mirror which affirms that he’s stunning and brave, but also that he’s a lovely little thinker. During lockdown, self-isolating in his £12 million home, he filmed himself weeping because he was already bored with his own company. ‘I hate reading,’ he cried, suggesting that if you have no life of the mind, you’ll always be a bad companion to yourself – even if you do refer to yourself in the plural. Having said this, he then had the nerve to say: ‘When people mess up a pronoun or something… It kind of ruins conversations. It’s going to take time. We’re changing a language here.’
I don’t expect everyone to have my almost ‘parasexual’ attachment to the English language
Someone who hates reading dares to make a claim that he is set on changing the loveliest tongue known to man; the language of Shakespeare, Churchill, and Burchill.
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