welcome to hell - well regional sports journalism anyway

It's not just policy nerds who love their jargon and meaningless sentences. Sometimes the people who are paid to explain this stuff get lost up in their own lingo.

Tonight's Evening Chronicle - awful rag - contained a column from sports writer John Gibson. Bizarrely, it's called Straight from the Shoulder...

Anyway, tonight's opening sentence was a classic. It read:

United must return to the torture chamber within the next 48 hours to search for the key by which they can escape.

Now, I'm no Newcastle fan - I like my teams to win stuff - but what on Earth does that mean?

If United return to the torture chamber, to get the key, surely that means they've already escaped?

Does the torture chamber refer to the match or something else?

And if it is the match, isn't that kind of an extreme way to describe a football match?

Reminds me of a rather over-the-top features writer I once worked with  who described a runner as "Belsen Thin" and when I complained on grounds of good taste told me it was OK because the Sunday Times once used it...

Keep it simple

Will