Challenge, for those of you not in the UK, is a digital television channel whose programming consists almost entirely of gameshow reruns from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. There’s the odd bit of original programming and occasional repeats of more recent stuff, but for the most part it’s about enjoying old gameshows.

One of the most interesting things about rewatching old gameshows in 2014 is pondering the sort of people who are on them — specifically, their jobs. In the older stuff you get on Challenge — stuff like Blankety Blank, 321 and any number of other shows with wobbly cardboard sets and LCD readouts of the participants’ scores — people tend to have very straightforward jobs. “I’m a plumber,” one contestant will say. “I work in a shop,” another will say. “I’m a newsagent,” another will say.

Compare and contrast with the sort of contestants you get on today’s shows — best exemplified by Challenge’s repeats of shows like Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, Catch Phrase and The Chase — and it’s a very different situation. “I’m a management consultant,” one will say. “I’m a business development manager,” another will say. (Andie informs me that this is the new name for what we used to know as “salesmen”.) “I’m an information technology technician in an educational establishment, specialising in campus-wide distributed network solutions,” another will say. (I made the last one up. Sounds convincing, though, doesn’t it?)

Notice the difference? That’s right, modern jobs all have utterly meaningless titles. Rather than being a straightforward description of what the person actually does, modern job titles obfuscate the person’s true purpose behind layers of doublespeak, presumably in an attempt to make everyone seem more important than they actually are. It’s probably the same reason that Asda has a “Colleagues Entrance” instead of a “Staff Entrance”, and why Waitrose employs “partners” instead of, you know, people who work in a supermarket.

It’s a trend that’s grown over the last ten or twenty years in particular, and it’s not a particularly positive change for the use of clear English. There seems to be a mistaken assumption that using the longest, most complicated and fiddly words possible to describe something makes it sound more “formal” and “intelligent” — it’s the same reason why people in suits incorrectly use “myself” instead of “me” when they’re trying to impress clients or superiors — but I’m pretty sure that most of us are wise to this little trick by now. Any time someone starts “myself”-ing at me, I just want to shake them and say “speak like a normal person! Do you talk to your friends like that?”

Actually, talking about this conjures up a number of fairly amusing mental images, the first one of which that sprang to mind was — don’t judge me — a management consultant having sex and breathlessly gasping that “the copulation between myself and yourself is approaching its conclusion, please prepare the personal cleanliness solutions for the removal of errant ejaculate from those areas in which it was unintended to fall”, by which point he would have probably already jizzed all over her tits anyway, rendering the entire statement moot and the pair of them sitting in slightly uncomfortable silence, both wondering why he can’t just say “I’m gonna cum” or “unnnnnggggghhhh” like a normal person.

[glances back at how this post started and where it ended up.]

I, uh… sorry, I don’t know what happened there. That sort of escalated quickly, didn’t it? Oh well. It’s late, all right? My brain is wandering to weird places and I apparently need to get some sleep.