THANK YOU to Mr Gwynne for sending us this example of bad grammar from London mayor, Boris Johnson.

Mr Johnson, who is currently in charge of the London Underground system, but is reportedly hoping to take over the country one day, generally prides himself on good English.

In the Daily Telegraph of 17th January, though, Mr Johnson was quoted as saying, in relation to the incident on the Malaysian Air flight:

“Myself and a few other passengers felt we needed to keep an eye on the male the whole time as we were worried about the safety of the crew and other passengers.”

Mr Gwynne points out that there are no fewer than two mistakes in that quite short sentence.

1. “Myself” absolutely cannot be used other than as an intensive pronoun or any reflexive pronoun (as in “I myself tripped myself up yesterday”).

2. And “male” is used expressly to distinguish a member of the male sex from a member of the female sex; not just to indicate any old person of the male sex.

Mr Gwynne adds: “I wonder how many of today’s teachers would know those two elementary bits of English?”

We’ll be sending Mr Johnson a complimentary copy of Gwynne’s Grammar to ensure he does not make the same elementary errors again. And we’ll be entering him in this year’s Bad Grammar Award in May, along with Mark Zuckerberg.

ENDS