Mike Ward At large

So So

So what I thought I’d do this week is begin every sentence of my column with the word “so”. So why on earth would I do that, you’re asking? So wouldn’t it make me sound absurd? So wouldn’t it soon become enormously irritating?
So wouldn’t you want to march around to Latest HQ and slap me really hard? So wouldn’t you be frustrated to discover I don’t actually work there, that I just email this column on a weekly basis? So, yes, you would.

So I’m doing it – starting all my sentences with “so”, I mean – because, well, it seems to be what everyone’s started doing now (well, not everyone, not my mum, she’s 90, but an awful lot of people, and indeed a lot of awful people). So I don’t want to feel left out.
So I even heard a bloke doing it on the news the other day, a bloke in an actual suit and tie, giving a really serious press conference, but beginning all his answers with “so”. So despite the immense seriousness of whatever it was he was fielding questions on, not a word of it sank in, not into my own personal brain at least, so distracted had I become by his ridiculous “so” habit.
So what exactly is going on here? So why have people started doing this? So how come our wonderful, rich language has been reduced to this lemming-speak, where everyone picks up on the same idiotic habit and nobody dares pause for a moment and say, ‘So, hold on, guys, why have we started speaking this way..?’ So God knows, you tell me.

So will people learning English, I wonder, be told from now on to start every sentence with “so”, rather like people who learn German are told to start every Noun with a capital Letter (my brother actually does that anyway: he’s not German, he’s just a buffoon), or all their words in a funny order to put? So it wouldn’t surprise me.
So what I’m actually wondering is whether it’s started to annoy me even more than that other thing, where people insist on ending every sentence with a rising inflection? So it sounds like a question?
So I think it’s on a par, I really do. So, what with that, plus the other habit that thoroughly gets my goat, where numpties constantly use the word “hashtag” in everyday speech, I find myself wanting to scream, or rip my hair out or, better still, rip someone else’s hair out, hashtag theydbloodydeserveit.

So at least I’ve achieved my objective, mind, of starting every sentence of this week’s column with “so”.
So I know what that’s left you thinking now.
So what..?
Mike Ward is the TV Critic of the Daily Star and the TV Editor of the Daily Express Saturday magazine. Hear him every Monday afternoon with Guy Lloyd on Brighton’s Juice 107.2