Kray-Z name Kray-Z guy
THE late, great Keith Waterhouse, once of this parish, had a nice line in ridicule when it came to euphemism. After someone decided ‘ disabled’ should be replaced with ‘differently abled’, Keithy wrote a spoof column about Noddy and his sidekick, Socially Challenged Ears. Sadly, this would be lost on the purse-lipped half-wits at the Leonard Cheshire charity, which has just declared terms such as ‘ ablebodied’, ‘epileptic’ and even ‘ blind’ to be ‘offensive’. Able-bodied is a statement of fact. Yet the charity insists that this should instead be ‘non-disabled’. Eh? Then again, they also allege that 14 million people in Britain are ‘disabled’. No, they’re not, unless you include everyone with a stammer and an ingrowing toenail. The list of banned words has been compiled in conjunction with a rapper (non-singer?) called Kray-Z Legz (real name:
Mark Humphries), who has spina bifida, and is not to be confused with the legendary Krazee-Eyez Killa from Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Heaven knows what Leonard Cheshire VC, the war hero who founded the organisation, would make of this lunacy.
By this warped logic, heterosexuals should be called ‘non-homosexual’. Men should be called ‘non-women’. And as for blind, Mail reader Marion O’Hanlon writes from Bath to wonder where this would leave Pinball Wizard, by The Who. Somehow, I don’t think it would scan . . .
That hearing-deficient, speech non-existent, young non-female person with visual impairment . . . Sure plays a mean pinball!