Bad Grammar Awards, Idler Academy

Grammars great: its a good thing to really persevere with. If that sentence makes you flinch, prepare to be infuriated at the Bad Grammar Awards. The Idler Academy’s second annual ceremony, dubbed ‘a thrilling X-Factor for pedants’, is a wry celebration of the year's gravest crimes against English.

Last year, the first prize for Bad Grammar was bestowed, ticklingly, upon a group of university professors. Even better, the academics’ numerous blunders appeared in the open letter they wrote to Michael Gove deriding the ‘dumbing down’ of education. Expect more hilarity and hypocrisy this year, as the mistakes range from cringe-worthy clangers to subtle deviations from rules that are almost obsolete.

This year’s panel of finger-pointing pedants boasts the formidable Jeremy Paxman, who spoke out against the grammatically apathetic, saying: ‘those who don’t care about it shouldn’t be surprised if we pay no attention to anything they say — if indeed they’re aware of what they’re trying to say.’ Quite. Except for one evening only the broadcaster and know-it-all will be paying very close attention indeed to a shortlist of careless and shoddy grammarians. 

Writer Hadley Freeman will lend a hand and expertise bought from a career writing for The Guardian (nicknamed the Grauniad for its propensity for error…).  Chef-cum-cookery writer brings the exacting standards of a restaurateur into the mix. Idler Academy founder Tom Hodgkinson will host the riotous grammatical debate. Last year he too was lambasted as it was pointed out that there was a misplaced hyphen on the invitation to the inaugural Bad Grammar Awards. It just goes to show, that there’re plenty of hi-jinks when grammarians gather together – and nobody’s safe from the accusation of grammatical error…