Nether Regions

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29798, 14 April 1962, Page 3

Nether Regions

[A Fourth Leader in *'The Times”]

A correspondent has written to the “Radio Times” complaining bitterly about the 8.8.C.'s use of what he or she—the letter is signed in a way that gives no clue as to the sex of the writer—calls “the maddening expression ‘in the region of.” The writer cites as an example a broadcaster who spoke of “a pension in the region of about £3 a week,’’ and it is difficult not to agree that this is indeed a region that should be wiped off the face of the map. “About,” in this particular instance, is already on the spot to do “in the region ofs” work for it; and it is work eminently suited to its hand. To be sure, it may to the pompous and the lovers of circumlocution seem a jaunty, cocky little word, lacking in dignity and in respect both to accuracy and to its betters. Further, it may be charged with that most truly dreadful of modern crimes, of taking up the attitude, that is, of “couldn’t care less.” but then in its defence it may be urged that it has never pretended to formal, scientific precision and that it is not quite so offhand as it may appear. It is. moreover, willing and adaptable and ready to serve in a multitude of circumstances.

Certainly “in the region of" has a clumsy air about it. The “man-about-town" we know, or, rather, We used to know; the “man-in-the-region-of-town” sounds a curious creature indeed. Then regions suggest worlds, and there are too many of them as it is. If a new play scores a hit, then, we are certain to be informed in print of excitement in the theatrical “world," while the film “world” is agitated to its depths (not that they are very deep) by the publicised sulks of the latest starlet. The football and cricket “worlds" are concerned alike over the question as to whether football will be played until the end of May, and so it goes on. These “worlds,” however, at least glitter in the mind as charged with pomp and splendour, with their own monarchs, peers, courtiers, and all the rest of it Regions, especially when they appear as regional, suggest nothing more exciting and spectacular than Boards, admirable things, no doubt, but dim and provincial compared with the glamour of those metropolitan "worlds.” Regions are most to be respected when they stand for what they rightly are, geographical locations, as the Twenty Question game has it. and certainly they should never mix themselves up with pensions of £3 a week or, if it comes to that, of any other sum. t