ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A Sky News presenter has taken time in the ad break before a news package on the situation in Niger to remind herself to pronounce the nation properly and not the way she did as a private schoolgirl.
“It rhymes with bonjour, it rhymes with conjure. Don’t say it, don’t say it,” said presenter Penelope Bond-Alexander at the Sky News bureau desk opposite Betoota City Hall.
“The same ‘G’ sound as Gigi [sic] Gabor, the ‘G’ is silent, just don’t say it. You’re not Alan Jones, they won’t let you say it on TV. We’re not in Miss Glendale’s geography class in Year 9. We can’t say it like it’s spelled, just to get some cheap laughs from the other girls. No, it rhymes with Monsieur! Bonjour, Monsieur! Have you heard what’s going on in, Niger? Gosh, sounds like a T-Swizzle song, doesn’t it?”
“I wonder what Miss Glendale is up to now. She would’ve heard 20 girls say the N-word that day and she said nothing. I can’t believe I had to wait until university to find out it’s not funny to say, like not just in publicly but privately, too. Like I can’t believe it. Lucky that girl didn’t beat the shit out of me like she said she would.”
The producer, the only other person in the booth, gave the ten second warning and began to count back from five.
“Don’t say it, don’t say it.”
More to come.
