I find this very irritating in TV and Radio interviews with members of the public:

"I'm married to Mary" - or "This is Bert Johnson, and you're married to Mary, is that right, Bert ?"

as if there is only ONE person called Mary in the whole world ! It should be: "My wife's name is Mary" or "...and your wife's name is Mary...."

Another pet peeve of mine is a pronunciation issue: the use of an open "ay" sound for the rounded "o" sound. I actually stopped listening to my local radio station because the travel reporter annoyed me so much with his pronunciation: "All clear on the M25 say far" (instead of "so far"). The presenter of a recent archaeology programme on TV did the same, and kept talking about "stanes" and "banes". This would be fine if the rest of the pronunciation was "heightened RP" (i.e. Noel Coward-type English), but these random rogue vowel sounds amongst otherwise standard RP really irritate.

Another annoying pronunication issue amongst broadcasters in particular: the use of "-in" as the ending of a word, instead of "-ing" when this is not part of their native dialect - i.e. the rest of their pronunciation is standard RP. Do they think it makes them sound relaxed and cool ?

- jeanie