'Pre-delicate hitches' from Brown as he avoids answering a question about the Queen

I’ve already posted some observations about ‘pre-delicate hitches’ coming out of the mouths of Gordon Brown and Hillary Clinton.

The general point is that such ‘hitches’ (e.g. ums, ers, pauses, restarted words, etc.) tend to happen when a speaker is about to say something that he or she knows is likely to come across as ‘delicate’ to their listeners.

And they came thick and fast on Sunday morning as Mr Brown tried to deal with Andrew Marr’s challenging question about why the Queen hadn’t been invited to attend the D-Day commemorations in Normandy.

Needless to say, he didn’t make any attempt to answer the question, but the number and frequency of 'hitches' suggest that he might actually have been finding his own evasiveness more uncomfortable than he usually does.

MARR: It’s a disgrace, is it not, that the Queen is not going to be representing us at D-Day at those commemoration services in France. How did that come about?

BROWN: I-I think-uh-eh you have to uh-ask-uh th-the palace to get their statements uh-u- on this.

Uh I have simply done what is my duty as a – as a Prime Minister – I’ve-uh accepted the u-personal invitation of Mr- Mr Sarkozy.

I think you know that Mr Harper, the Canadian prime minister, i- is going, and I think in these circumstances, this particular event uh-was-uh this one of the events was –was –was one that the president wanted to be for prime ministers and presidents, but if the Queen wanted to attend these- these- these events, or if any member of the Royal family wanted to attend these events, I would make that possible."

Why has Gordon Brown become a regular on the Today programme?

It used to be the case that the prime ministers only went on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme during general elections (when they appeared in one of the slots for party leaders), or when they were visiting some foreign country.

That was certainly the rule in Mrs Thatcher’s day, and I don’t remember hearing much of Blair on the programme (except during elections) either.

So I was very surprised, not long after he’d finally made it into number 10, to hear Gordon Brown being interviewed on Today. And he seems to have made a habit of it and was at it again this morning, less than 24 hours after doing a TV interview with Andrew Marr on Sunday.

What’s even more surprising is that Mr Brown (and/or his aides) seem to think that it’s a smart move to inflict more and more interviews with him on a mass audience.

If his interview performances had a proven track record in winning friends and influencing people, they might have a point.

But, as I’ve noted before (e.g. HERE), Mr Brown is not as smart an interviewee as he seems to think he is – unless, of course, I’m completely wrong in believing that there’s nothing like repetitive evasiveness and undisciplined verbosity when it comes to alienating listeners and viewers.