Andy Mitchell from Radio Wave

I had a pizza last night. Nothing particularly newsworthy in that of course, but I ordered a SMALL one. Apparently small pizzas are now known as PERSONAL pizzas for heavens sake. It got me thinking again how the wholesale destruction of the English language as we know it could be as near as a week on Tuesday.

Why can’t we just speak to each other in terms we all understand? Now as we know, fast food takeaways have a language all their own, that only the army of 12-year-olds serving behind the counter seem at home with.

We’ve spoken before in this column how small, medium and large went out of the window years ago to be replaced with a whole myriad of junk including standard (medium), regular, (medium again) and in one of the fancier coffee shops, “Grande” (large, whilst trying to sound continental at the same time).

Walk down the street and you’ll see signs for “hand fried chips”....I mean who else pops them in the fryer if it isn’t the nice lady and her hand then?

The liberal use of the word “fresh” has always had alarm bells ringing and makes you wonder if some are trying to convince themselves a little too much. “Locally sourced” is also a favourite, though we’re never sure how local.

Home made is a lovely warm notion and summons up the cuddly era when people spent all day conjuring up a three-course meal from the contents of the garden, and what meat they could get on ration. Now, Home made can be seen attached to anything that can be grabbed out of the freezer and bunged in a microwave...it doesn’t say WHICH home it was made in.

There’s this constant craving to make everything seem more exciting, more traditional, more euphemistic...but why?

“Jugs of tea for the Sands!” proclaimed the famous sign on the Golden Mile 50 years ago. You knew where you were with a sign like that. Now it would probably be offering an array of cappuccinos and lattes in grande and standard plastic cups.

So I arrived home with my “personal” pizza (just five inches but you can’t have everything). I shared it out. I DO hope the Pizza Police were watching.