From The Guardian weekly, January 9 1994

David Rowan presents the Excessively Distorted Language Awards for 1993

There is Usually a word for it

Camille Paglia Award for Verbal Pomposity

To Camille Paglia whose answering machine message goes like this: You have reached the voicemail line of Professor Camille Paglia. Due to her pressing obligations as a teacher and scholar, Professor Paglia cannot personally return calls. Do not send faxes: Professor Paglia does not accept them. All packages are opened and inspected by the staff. Unsolicited materials without return postage may be automatically discarded. Urgent messges may be left on the tape to be reviewed by the staff. If you do not receive a reply to your letter or call, please assume that Profesor Paglia is not interested in your proposal …

Native Californian Political Correctness Award

RUNNER UP: Santa Cruz city council, which debated a motion to outlaw lookism, the practice of judging people by their looks, on the basis that some faced discrimination because they were cosmetically challenged. WINNER: the Los angeles Times, which banned words such as crazy, holy rollers, babe, queer and ghetto. This last decision caused some problem for a Washington Post reporter, keen to discuss the film White men Cant Jump but careful to retitle it There May Be Anthropological Differences That Account For Variation in Personal Vertical Lift, Though These Do Not of Course Imply the Kinetic Inferiority of One Ethnic Group Vis-a-Vis Another.

Economical With The Actualite Euphemism Award

RUNNER-UP: General Motors, whose early-retirement programme – in true job-seekers allowance mode–is known as special accelerated attrition. WINNER: Stephen Pollard, lawyer for the MP George Foulkes, who was found with a rather high level of alcohol in his blood. Mr Pollard said that his client had been at a whisky party as befits an MP concerned with the blending industry.

Roger Levitt Award For Openness in The City

To those market analysts who decided it was just too awkward being seen making sell recommendations on certain stocks. So they decided that sell should officially be re-named hold and then strong hold when the masses got wind of what they meant. Finally they decided that, regarding dodgy shares, theyd now be aggressively neutral.

Seriously Lost in Translation Award

WINNER: the Black Dyke Mills brass band, celebrated in Yorkshire since 1815, and due to play Carnegie Hall, New York, last year. Until the hall detected that black and dyke might offend both the race and gay lobbies in one and suggested re-naming it the British Mills Brass Band – a national insult, an outrageous suggestion ….

Ronnie Kray Award For East-End Cultural Enrichment

To Mohammed Ali Abdulslarmov, a 23 year-old Russian studying at Nottingham University, who called upon to translate (sic) when an elderly Russian patient had trouble breathing. He has run out of his breath climbing the old apples and pears, the student told doctors, and he doesnt know where theyve put his whistle and flute.

Mohammed, it transpired, had concluded that Cockney slang was the backbone of nineties English, having learned most of it from watching Only Fools And Horses and Minder.