Perhaps because more and more BBC radio programmes are being broadcast from Salford, the whole of Britain is getting used to hearing multiple uses of the expression ‘I was sat’ or ‘I was stood’. Often, those words come at the very beginning of programmes, spoken by the presenter to set the scene. ‘I’m sat in a crowded pub’, ‘I’m sat in the back of a van on a lay-by’, ‘I’m stood in the rain on the outskirts of Oldham, waiting for…’
To those who live south of the Watford Gap services, this simply sounds grammatically wrong. It’s a misuse of the passive voice. It should be ‘I was sitting’ or ‘I was standing’. The one occasion when it might be correct to say ‘I was sat’ would be when describing where the hostess had placed you at a wedding breakfast: ‘I was sat next to the bride’s uncle.’ That’s ‘I was sat’ in the true passive voice for which it was intended, describing someone actively being sat down by someone else.
If a new series of Listen with Mother ever gets commissioned by today’s BBC, perhaps the voice at the beginning will say: ‘Are you sat comfortably? Then I’ll begin.’
It’s a good thing that the regions have their own ways of saying things: these differences are the spice of life. ‘I was sat’ does have a certain aura of Anglo-Saxon permanence and rootedness to the spot about it, as does ‘I was stood’. You get the sense that the person has been ‘sat’ or ‘stood’ wherever it is for a good few hours, perhaps after a good ‘northern portion’, and that to them, the expression ‘I was standing’ or ‘I was sitting’ would sound fey, effeminate, drawing-roomy and dilettante-ish.
In the wake of Gary Lineker’s departure announcement last month, a BBC staffer was quoted in the Times as saying that the new Match of the Day would have ‘less emphasis on analysis from people sat in the studio’. The Times has a duty to quote exactly what people say, but the danger is that this exactly how these grammatical habits spread to the mainstream. I wonder whether, if a new series of Listen with Mother ever gets commissioned by today’s BBC, the voice at the beginning will say to the children: ‘Are you sat comfortably? Then I’ll begin.’
So far, ‘sat’ and ‘stood’ are the only verbs of non-motion to have adopted this strange passive-sounding form. No one yet says ‘I was knelt in church the other day…’. But ‘I was sat’ and ‘I was stood’ are spreading southwards – and those who care about grammar have the feeling that a new grammatical infelicity is about to become ubiquitous. A London friend of mine glimpsed a page of her daughter’s open diary recently, and was a bit shocked to find she’d written ‘I was sat on the lawn…’. At a café in north London, another friend was asked (by a local waitress) whether she’d ‘like to be sat on the patio’.
It’s an example of ‘northern creep’. Other examples are the spread of the expression ‘I’m buzzing’ (or ‘I’m buzzin’’) to convey excitement, and of the expression (which Nick Ferrari put to me on LBC when I was protesting against Low Traffic Neighbourhood fines) ‘Them’s the rules’. Northern creep has been slower to take hold than American creep (‘I was, like, I’m so psyched’), Cockney creep (‘Cheers, mate!’), and Australian creep (‘No worries’), but it’s picking up pace. Perhaps we’ll have to wait for the completion of all phases of HS2 for it to reach full speed.
Another catalyst for northern creep, along with the BBC’s move to Salford, is the current atmosphere at universities. These days, the pressure is on for young people to suppress their posh- or southern-sounding tendencies. On campuses, where students from all over the country sit on the grass together and chat, they do their utmost to be ultra-sensitive and non-offensive to each other. So the ones who would usually say ‘I was sitting’ find themselves quick to adopt ‘I was sat’. How things have changed from the 1950s, when northern grammar school students felt under pressure to adopt southern expressions and accents.
I worry that when the next batch of rewriters create the new version of the Apostles’ Creed (which has already evolved from ‘He sitteth at the right hand of the Father’ to ‘He is seated at the right hand of the Father’), they’ll be so keen not to offend, and not to sound too southern, that we’ll all have to say ‘He is sat at the right hand of the Father’. That really would make Jesus sound as if he’d plonked his bottom firmly on the wooden chair right next to the Father, and had no intention of budging any time soon.
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