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Miners' canaries ousted by parrots?
by loiswakeman @ 14 Feb. 2008 - 11:58:26

"They fell in love ... as he was talking about all the miners' diseases he wants to cure - psitticosis [sic] and things" - Lucy Fleming discussing the plot of Brief Encounter on Radio 4's Today programme

As more informed readers will know, psittacosis (not psitticosis)  is a disease of parrots that humans can catch; miners get silicosis.

Perhaps I am expecting too much of an actress (sorry, actor), but this level of general knowledge is just so depressing. Lucy is Celia Johnson's daughter, so one might have assumed she knows the dialogue quite well. Still, they both begin with a sibilant and end in "osis" and are boring science-y stuff - so who cares?

You may be able to hear her repeat this live, tonight.

Aside: psittacosis is an example of a zoonosis - a disease of animals that humans can catch - like bovine TB, brucellosis, avian flu, and the wonderfully-named glanders and farcy, sounding like a music-hall duo - but a nasty horse disease. I particularly like its plural: zoonoses - one of those words that is so irresistibly easy to mispronounce. Like bed-raggled, misl-ed and reus-ed!

More about zoonoses.

7 comments | Permalink | Recommend this post
Tags: bbc, ignorance, radio 4, science, zoonosis,

Comments: Hide subcomments

loiswakemanloiswakeman [Member]
http://lois.co.uk
14/02/08 @ 12:01

Aha: the tags I put on this post now mean I am only missing Q, X and Y in my list of tags. Must see what I can do with quaggas, yellow and xenobiology...

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The_WalrusThe_Walrus [Member]
http://www.doctor-dark.co.uk
14/02/08 @ 12:36

I'm looking forward to seeing what you can do with quaggas...

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loiswakemanloiswakeman [Member]
http://lois.co.uk
14/02/08 @ 15:08

I think they are quite nice roasted with redcurrant jelly!

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MrFlightyMrFlighty [Member]
14/02/08 @ 17:05

There used to be a blogger named Quagga! She's a lovely South African lady.

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LissaTLissaT pro
15/02/08 @ 13:13

I believe I read somewhere about a project to breed quaggas from carefully selected zebra which show quagga-like characteristics and using DNA from preserved samples.

I believe that there is a similar project with mammoths, Indian elephants and frozen remains.

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Not-HerneschaseNot-Herneschase [Member]
14/02/08 @ 16:55

I spend most of my days heckling the poor beliguered souls on the radio and let's face it National Radio here is NOT Radio 4, however hard it may try! It must be quite hard to speak spontaneously without stumbling over ones words but why should I take that into account :D

tylluanpenrytylluanpenry pro
15/02/08 @ 00:36

:)) Nobody seems to check things much these days, do they?

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