Friday 27 June 2008

I'M JO KING!

Does anyone else slightly get the giggles every week when they read out the credits to Gardeners' Question Time? 

It's not because I think "Assistant Producer, Jo King" is a funny name. I'm fine with Jo King. 

It's the amount of effort the person reading them out goes to, to avoid running the syllables together without drawing too much attention to it. It's like you can hear his little brain working across the airwaves, going: "not too fast, not too slow, a bit of a gap, but not too much of a gap."

Every week I'm on tenterhooks waiting to see what slight emphasis he'll be going for this time to avoid anyone anywhere in the kingdom thinking for a moment that one of the GQT team is called Joking. 

But what calamity do they imagine might happen if we did?

6 comments:

Helen/patientgardener said...

It would be good if they did them like they do at the end of Whose line is it anyway - eg in the style of cowboys, or martians etc etc

VP said...

We nearly fell off our chairs laughing when she introduced herself to us before the GQT recording we went to.

However, she has developed that thin lipped steely glare that brooks no chortling in the ranks.

I commented in a similar vein over on GM once - he responded that they keep it very quiet that her brother's called Wayne (allegedly).

Sorry GM - I couldn't resist pinching your joke. Emma's stolen my thunder again!

Arabella Sock said...

Chez Sock we find the Joking bit so thigh slappingly funny that I hadn't noticed the pauses. I'm sure Jo King has been assistant producer for years and years - you would have thought that she (I've just seen VPs post come in - I'd always assumed He)would have got promoted by now.

emmat said...

First a man on Garden Monkey says he's met Monica from Glasgow, and then VP declares she's seen Jo King in the flesh!! I feel left out and socially excluded to the point of suicidality.

See I don't find the name inherently funny, I just love the trying not to make it funny. Now I have an added layer of enjoyment imagining the stern Jo King standing over him with him feeling enormous pressure to say it right and NOT humorously...

VP said...

Ahhh but Emma you've been hob nobbing with the Blue Peter gardener. You have hordes of children who want to change places with you before you can say 'Knife'!

Us mere mortals have to hoover up the crumbs of fame offered whenever we can. The latest is up chez VP for this weekend only and then 'pouf' it'll have diappeared into the ether - as will have Monica of course. Unless Victoria whipped out her journo tape recorder whilst she was there and can grace us with a bootleg copy?

BTW I've had a search hit you might like - Gardeners' World Balaclava. It looks like we need to whip out our knitting needles pretty sharpish, to fill this obvious gap in the BBC marketing strategy. But shh! Don't get caught out like that woman who was knitting Dr Who monsters did. We'll just swap patterns amongst ourselves and not publish them on the internet eh?

The Garden Monkey said...

Do you think Mad Monica Soot had been To King?