Calling out phrases we just don’t need to use

LAST weekend, while flicking through the 500-plus channels on my TV, I regretted breaking the remote control because pressing the buttons on the side of the TV set was becoming very tiring.

Resting my weary arm, I stopped on a channel that was showing a 1950s Hollywood Western in colour and widescreen that, being a 1950s Hollywood Western, featured a cast of macho actors with names like Rock and Brick and Terracotta Rooftile.

It was almost the end of the film and, in the saloon, the handsome sheriff was enjoying a pint of Brains – or it could have been a Malibu and lemonade – with the leading lady.

Suddenly a grizzled old-timer with a gammy leg called Stumpy (no, I don’t know what his other leg was called) hobbled in and told the Sheriff that out on the street, notorious outlaw ‘No Nose’ O’toole was waiting to challenge him to a gunfight.

As the handsome Sheriff, acting cool, said “Okay, but first I’m gonna finish my pint of Brains – or Malibu and lemonade,” the villain shouted, “I’m calling you out, sheriff!”

And I suddenly realised that’s where the expression “Calling someone out”, which is used all over the place these days, originally came from!

In the Old West, you challenged someone to a gun fight, by ‘calling him out!’

But its meaning has changed since cowboy gunfights went out of fashion.

Though I did once witness a furious pea-shooter duel outside an Ammanford hostelry!

Today, when someone says, “I’m calling so and so out!” they mean they’re criticising them or asking them to explain their actions. So why not just say that? Why use an American expression when we have perfectly adequate ones of our own?

Another annoying import from the United States that media people like to use is ‘From the getgo!”.

What’s wrong with “Right from the start”? Or “From the beginning”? And don’t get me started on politicians who lazily say . . . “Going forward” when they mean “In the future!”

If I discover who imported these pointless American expressions, going forward, I’m going to call them out!