BBC presenter Alex Scott fired back last night at criticism of her pronunciation from an ex-minister - then used her morning introductory line to underline her pride in her roots and deliver a beautiful rebuke at complaints of a lack of “elocution”.
Lord Digby Jones had moaned that coverage of the Tokyo Olympics was being ‘spoiled’ by a “noticeable inability to pronounce her ‘g’s at the end of a word”, tweeting out a list of sports ending in the letter which had apparently offended his sensibilities.
Scott quickly retorted on Twitter that she was proud of her upbringing and accent which was representative of her struggles and successes and encouraged youngsters who may not “have a certain kind of privilege in life” to not let misplaced judgements on their accent or appearance hold them back.
To that end, the 140-cap former England international turned leading broadcaster made a point of listing as many sporting types and approaches as possible - all not-so-subtly lacking in their final letter.
“Evenin’! So far we’ve been runnin’, ridin’, shootin’, scorin’, swimmin’ and puttin’, but we’ve got a lot of gold to still uncover.”
With that, she handed over to direct coverage of each event, her point well and truly made and her status as a top-level broadcaster entirely intact.
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Scott has been a regular on-screen presence throughout the summer, during the Olympics and Euro 2020 and will be back for the new Premier League season too, having been appointed the new host of Football Focus on BBC Sport.
