Cardiff University gets its knickers in a twist in embarrassing advice to students

I know this will get goat, but that august organ of academia has got its knickers in a twist, the wrong end of the stick, a bee in its bonnet, and is hot under the collar and throwing its toys out of the pram for all the wrong reasons. Cardiff’s students have been advised to jettison colloquial idioms such as “a piece of cake” and “kill two birds with one stone” – because this is very “British-English” and others might not understand. I read English literature at the and struggle to understand the term “British-English” and how or why the use of English in its home, the UK, could be considered toxic enough to require what is effectively a trigger warning.

Instead of bowdlerising students’ exchanges, cleansing them of colour and flavour, Cardiff University should actually concentrate on a far more worrying phenomenon – the misuse and mangling of idioms by morons and modern-day Mrs Malaprops. How frequently, for example, do we hear politicians describing human feats achieved “off their own back”? They mistakenly believe they are extolling the efforts of unaided back-breaking work. They are wrong.

The idiom, of course, is “off one’s own bat”, and hails from cricket, referring to the individual decision to run or not to run after bat strikes ball. Putting one’s “back into something” is a charming idiom and an entirely different kettle of fish.

I also wince when folk dismiss a dud film as a “damp squid”. Squid are meant to be moist and there is nothing disappointing about a damp one. The phrase they need is “damp squib”. A squib is a firework. If it’s damp it won’t ignite. Nothing is more useless than a sparkler that won’t sparkle.

Lovely listeners calling in to have treated me to an array of imaginatively reconfigured idioms. “Died in the war” instead of “dyed in the wool”;“tarnished with the same brush” instead of “tarred” and “spill the tea” instead of “spill the beans” – from an ancient Greek method of counting votes.

May I respectfully suggest that Cardiff provides students with a guide to stitches in time, cooks and broth and bulls – never elephants – in china shops. Or is it old-fashioned or disrespectful to suggest separating sheep from goats, wheat from chaff and actually learning something?