Why do people talk nonsense in public

There’s something about the word located that makes me want to slit throats. Not that I’m a naturally furious chap, not a bit of it. But located makes me want to shoot a puppy. The safety instructions are ‘located’ at the end of the carriage. The life-jackets are ‘located’ under the seats. They needn’t be located. They just are. The life-jackets are under the seats. The information desk is on the ground floor. I want to take a huge red pen to the world and start deleting.

The curious thing is that everybody — even health-and-safety officers — can talk properly in a pub. By properly I don’t mean that they’ll necessarily use the subjunctive perfectly or distinguish between disinterested and uninterested. What I mean is that in a pub, surrounded by the happy clink of glasses, a chap will say: ‘I saw a man get out of his car and run off up Easton Street.’ Simple sentences like that. But put them on Crimewatch and they forget how to speak.

Crimewatch is a splendid place to watch the demise of the English language. The police are never looking for people, only for individuals. ‘We are trying to locate three individuals…’ As opposed, of course, to composite beings. If the sex of the individual is known, they become a male or a female; but never, perish the thought, a man or woman. Men don’t commit crimes, males do. These individuals do not walk or run or drive or skip or any of the things that mere people might do. They proceed. Sometimes they proceed on foot. Sometimes they proceed in an easterly direction. They were never seen, only sighted. All of them are trying to make good their escape. That’s why the police are appealing to members of the public. Who, in the name of all that’s pleonastic, is not a member of the public?