- Wed Sep 22, 2021 2:14 pm
#10509
I once read a thing by Rebecca Front (The Thick of It etc) in which she said that as a self-confessed "news junkie", what really infuriated her was the "payoff pun".
Her example was to imagine a report on rising drinks prices in the run up to Christmas - cue piece from a pub where the reporter says that Christmas cheer will be - point to optics - "in increasingly small measures. Back to you, Chris.".
I have to agree with her. The news story payoff in general* is annoying enough, but the sacrifice of content or analysis for a fucking pun is infuriating.
*The news story payoff: the tendency, especially in newspapers, to always finish a story with a) a wry comment or quote**, b) an 'unexpected' victory of the little guy over authority, c) an ironic twist, or d) all of the above. It's meant to be entertaining, but just feels false.
**A classic being Liz Jones's notorious piece on the murder of Joanna Yeates in 2010, where she ended her cack-handed observations with her being stuck without money at a toll booth, only for a kindly truck driver to lend her some change and cheerily say that "we're not all bad".
As the actress said to the bishop, rabbi, imam and priest
"My eyes have seen the glory, I'm a born again Atheist!"