Spice up your lingo

Geri Halliwell has always seemed like quite a good thing. There was all the girl power stuff in the 90s and getting all flirty with Mandela.

She rode a storm of abusive innuendo in the media about her body image and she’s been a bit of a champion of the cause of single motherhood.

Even commending the Queen for being something of a trouper isn’t a bad thing to have done. So it wasn’t what she said last month, but how she said it that caused the flak.

In a survey conducted some time ago by the broadcasting regulators, only two words came out as more offensive than “spastic” and “spaz”. Best not say what they were for fear of causing offense here.