Writer Mark Mason complained in a recent Spectator article about the increasing tendency of politicians and public relations spokespeople to preface their replies in interviews on the Today programme and the like with the word ‘so’.
Grant Shapps, for instance, replied to a question about benefit changes on Today a couple of weeks ago by saying: “So, I think there are three things . . .”
Some theories about why they do this are rather too complicated to go into here. But one is that adding ‘so’ gives the interviewee time to think.
In this it would tally with something that has long annoyed me on Today. This is that instead of answering a question with a simple ‘yes’ — as you or I might — people often say: “Very much so.”
They’ve been at it so long that in my mind Today is The Very Much So, Brian programme — a reference to the presenter Brian Redhead (left) who packed up (and soon pegged out) as long ago as 1993.
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