DOCKIES

Because SURE can't figure out how to re-connect to the BBC World Service, we now get the BBC TV News - audio only - on the SAMS Radio 2 channel.

Apart from the fact that much of the time the programmes - designed, of course, for a visual medium - make no sense in sound-only mode, we also get the South African adverts, which introduced me to this new word.

I'm assuming that a "dockie" (I've only heard it said so I'm guessing at the spelling) is what normal sane and literate people call a "documentary". Apparently five syllables is too much for the millennium generation so it had to be abbreviated and "dockie" was the result.

Properly produced documentaries (by which I exclude almost all those produced by American television) require concentration and considered thought and it strikes me that anyone illiterate enough to refer to a documentary as a "dockie" is probably not capable of actually understanding one anyway, so the word is redundant.