BEACHCOMBER 104 YEARS OLD AND STILL PAINED BY PRONOUNS...

AWOKEN by a telephone call at the crack of noon the other day, I lifted the receiver and heard the unmistakable voice of the Apostropher Royal saying: “It has gone on for too long and it is high time we did something about it.”

“I am sure I agree,” I said, “but what exactly are you referring to?”

“Oh, sorry,” he apologised. “Didn’t I say? It’s the pronoun problem, which has become a linguistic epidemic. The other day, I heard a woman on BBC Radio 4, utter the words: ‘Me and my husband are coming to an agreement.’ Then, not long after, I heard a man on the same radio station say: ‘I booked for my wife and I.’

How can such people disregard the simplest rules of grammar, and what has come over the BBC that they broadcast such solecisms?”

“It’s worse than you think,” I replied. “I was watching the usually excellent Newscast late at night recently and was appalled to hear the normally admirable Adam Fleming report Boris Johnson as saying: ‘Oh me and Joe Biden talked about how astonished we were ...’. I do not know what they teach at Eton these days, but I think it probable that one of the first things our Prime Minister learnt there was that one does not use ‘me and Joe Biden’ as the subject of a verb.”

I heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. Sir D’Anville then asked in a sombre voice: “What can we do about this?”

“We must persuade the BBC to have a Zero Grammatical Tolerance Day once a month,” I said. “If anyone says ‘I booked for my wife and I,’ the host must point out that he would never say ‘I booked for I’ and that bringing his wife into it makes no grammatical difference.

Equally, one would not say ‘Me am coming to an agreement,’ so me and my husband cannot come to an agreement, however well they may get on.”

Sir D’Anville added: “And if the BBC’s chief political correspondent Adam Fleming ever again dares to say ‘me and Joe Biden talked,’ Laura Kuenssberg can fix him with a steely gaze and point out that he means ‘Joe Biden and I’.” I shall inform the BBC of my chat with the Apostropher Royal and tell them that me and him have come to an agreement. Apparently, it’s the only language they understand.