Corporate Gobbledygook

As I was writing the post about phrases from baseball becoming a part of everyday office jargon, a Sunday evening TV stalwart flashed back into memory. The master of corporate gibberish was Gus Hedges from Channel 4’s Drop the Dead Donkey. Played to perfection by Robert Duncan who gave life to Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin‘s poke at 80s yuppie corporate flannel.

Sadly the copyright void that is YouTube doesn’t have any clips of Gus, so you’ll have to make do with the written form. Spot any favourites?

Just so you know, I’ll be stir-frying some ideas round my think-wok first thing Monday morning. Enjoy…

• All right Team are we achieving megathrust? Ace!
• Anyway, heads down, chins up, chests out, teriffic, well played team.
• Are we nuking the opposition news busters? Teriffic.
• Are we sniffing round the bottoms of the opposition?
• Aye aye coach, had a good weekend recharging the batteries for another surge of powerhouse info-dynamics?
• Coach, if I could input into your mental mainframe for a moment…
• Could we interlock brain spaces in my work area?
• From now on I’m going to employ relaxation techniques to turn off stress river and mosey gently down contentment creek.
• George, can we pool our brain spaces into a centre of excellence?
• Good morning newsbusters, are we cooking with napalm today? You bet!
• Good morning scoop busters!
• Good morning teamsters!
• Helen we need a rapid interface in the chin-wag department.
• Helen, if I could just park in your mental multi-storey a moment…
• Henry, television is no longer corner store it’s a hyper-mega-market. And if we want Connie Consumer to slip her hand into the freezer cabinet and pull us out, we have to be the frozen peas with the nice picture on the front and the 10% off coupon.
• Henry, welcome to my humble living space.
• However, the fickle hand of Mr Fate has spun the coin of destiny.
• I feel a very real sense that we ought to be wary of running any unsubstansiated stories if we’re to avoid a faeces and fan situation.
• I see myself as a sort of hands off overview executive who sits at the sharp end and interacts within the office matrix…
• I think we have a slight togetherness shortfall here.
• I’d just like you to stir-fry something in my think-wok.
• If Mrs Whitehouse saw this, she’d have our collective danglies in a Magi-Mix.
• I’m a committed anti-tittle-tattle person.
• I’m in major cellular rejuvination mode, fast tracking my way to eternal biological viability.
• I’m not here.
• I’m reading this great new book on the benifits of reciprocal social intergrational relationships within the work environment. ("He means ‘having friends")
• I’m setting you free! Free to rome the high seas of enterprise as the buccaneers of our broadcasting future!
• It’s an anti verminous defecation deterrent. ("It’s to stop pigeons crapping on the building")
• I’ve never been at a burial scenario before.
• Jill, could you come for a brief scuba in my think tank?
• Just a thought I wanted to pop into your fishbowl to see if it blows bubbles.
• Lady Merchant’s just arrived, so no drops in the clanger department.
• Let’s keep kneecapping the opposition.
• Let’s opperate a zipped-lip scenario on this one.
• Let’s stress how Tony (Blair)’s got a superb raft of ideas, several rafts in fact, which he’s lashed together into a pontoon of excellence!
• Look out Mummy, the snake wants a reproductive interface.
• Look, Henry, if it’s any help, I do have a sleep area over capacity situation.
• Morning hotshots! Are we cooking with napalm? You bet!
• Morning newsdiggers! Have we struck gold this morning?
• Morning ratings busters! Are we scraping Pete Punter with sexy scoops? You bet!
• Morning talent base! Are the afterburners on full thrust? You bet!
• Morning, mountaineers. Climbing the north face of newsmaking again are we? Teriffic!
• My place is here, with my family of co-acheivers!
• Problems are just the pregnant mothers of solutions.
• Quality stress diserpation opportunities here.
• Sorry, Helen, had a bit of a composure shortfall earlier.
• The three of us can go back and get into some real pro active recreational interfacing…
• There is just something I’d like to pop into your perculator, see if it comes out brown.
• Today is tomorrow’s tadpole of opportunity.
• We all need to go on a forgivness curve.
• We do rather appear to have an ongoing underwear entanglement situation…
• Well, butt-kickers, what’s cooking?
• We’re merely running our bulletins through the cappucino machine of innovation, see if it comes out frothy.
• We’ve got to downsize our sloppiness overload.
• What stories are we scorching the opposition with today?
• What’s filling today’s scoop sandwich chief?
• Yes, Alice is indeed now occupationally challenged.
• Yes, well, I sense we may be straying down tangent boulevard here.
• Yes, well, obviously I don’t have an opinion, I’m a support module, but it would be very easy to fnd ourselves standing on buttered ball bearings over this piece.
• Yes, well, publicity-wise this is a rather regrettable gonads in the guilotine situation.
• You see, when it comes to sexual interfacing with the female gender group, I’ve always been caution-orientated due to ongoing problems of an adaptive nature regarding the gooiness factor on the physical front.

Thanks to Hazey, Shaolin_Monkey and h2g2 for the quotes. If anyone’s got more, do let me know and I’ll add them or leave a comment below. Thanks.

Also published on Medium.

About Sam Michel

Inquisitive. Hopeful. Jovial. Cantankerous. Digital marketer. Event organiser. Long-time fan of tech, collaboration and innovation. Exploring digital, social, business, technology, society, psychology & startups. Founder Chinwag, Digital Mission, Pitch NYC, ChinwagPsych. Former Exec Dir, Social Media Week London. More short stuff @toodlepip on Twitter.

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