When I was a young boy I used to be addicted to the gameshow “Catchphrase’ presented by chirpy Irishman Roy Walker. One of the rounds involved a yellow cartoon character called Mr Chips. Mr Chips would show images of objects and you’d have to guess the word that the images made up. So a picture of a car and a rear end of a cow would make “car-reer”. Or something like that.
Anyway, I wonder if Caroline Gilroy ever watched Catchphrase. Vee-Noh is her wine label concept that plays with pronunciation and uses the phonetic approach to presenting grape varieties. So we get the painfully obvious Sha-Don-Aye and Shi-Raz-Mer-Low. Hmmm.
Lame and tongue-in-cheek it may be, but I can’t help think that there is something in this. Indeed I can see phonetic labels working rather well at Yate’s Wine Lodge. For overseas readers Yate’s Wine Lodge is a kind of human zoo where cavemen and cavewomen congregate to drink Gallo by the bucket before copulating behind (sometimes in front) of trees in the local park.
Oddly enough. Many of the cavewomen are called Chardonnay.
And here’s Mr Chips in surely the funniest gameshow clip in television history!!
Forget the wine… this Catchphrase clip had me rolling around the floor in stitches! I used to love that show. You’re right about Yate’s though … perhaps you should suggest it to them as a new line.
Why isn’t this show still on TV? It’s a timeless format. Bring back Mr Chips