26th November:

Over time, and with repeated use, certain phrases in the English language are eventually told to pack their bags and are sent off to that smelly land beloved of tabloid journalists that we like to call 'cliche'. One such example, which will be familiar to every British frequent flyer and cinema frequenter and which has become piss-boilingly annoying for various reasons that I won't bore you with here, is the expression 'sit back and relax'.

It has, sadly, become one of the stock phrases that every customer service best-practice guide and handbook deems should be blandly and insincerely trotted ad nauseum when dealing with the great unwashed (aka members of the public). "Sit back, relax, and enjoy the film". "Sit back, relax, and enjoy your flight". Quite apart from the question of whether it is physiologically possible or otherwise to be relaxed whilst sitting forward (without looking like an extra from 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'), I question who ever came up with this expression in the first place. Is it not an unnatural invention of some kind, like rose wine, silicone implants and Noel Edmonds? The literal and ultimately meaningless result of an attempt to succinctly express a higher concept? A bastardisation born from letting some long-dead idiot who barely scraped a B in their A-level English exam loose on the syllabus of an ancient hospitality degree course? We cannot say for sure. The only certainty is that if I hear the expression being delivered one more time by someone with cow eyes who clearly couldn't give a toss whether I am sitting on my head or am wound-up like a coiled spring on the verge of metal fatigue, you will more than likely see me on the front page of several national newspapers having been charged with something that would make Russian sailors run of out a bar in embarrassment.

Enjoy.

Oh, and have a nice day.