At the risk of sounding like a very old, very sad man, why is it considered acceptable to have voice-over artists (loose term) mispronounce words? I refer, quite specifically to a current ASDA aberration in which the cheeky, chirpy, ill-educated misfit on the mic articulates the collective term ‘1000s’ as if it starts with an ‘F’. It doesn’t. Thousands = 1000s. Fousands isn’t a word. It’s nonsense. How many donkeys are there in Egypt? Fousands, really? You may as well respond by slowly sticking out armageddon and then quantifying over a maroon entymology barrier. Exactly.

If you fail to pronounce ‘th’ correctly, and instead plump for ‘f’, do you not run into problems? If, for example, you want to improve your sewing and so request a thimble for Christmas, should you be surprised if a cast member from the popular children’s TV series The Fimbles turns up? No, you shouldn’t.