See that quote above? It contains one of the best mixed metaphors I’ve seen in years.  It was published in the Hobart Mercury recently and was uttered by the bloke who wants to helicopter tourists in and out of the Tasmanian wilderness but is up against environmental opposition. 

What makes a champion mixed metaphor?  Let’s take this one as an example.  First, we strip off excess verbiage and strip it down to its naked glory:  ‘In terms of the thin edge of the world, I’m the meat in the sandwich.’

Well for a start you’ve got a hilariously impossible notion right there – ‘the thin edge of the world’.  I defy anyone to imagine such a thing as the thin edge of the world.  Mr Hackett may well have meant to say ‘the thin end of the wedge’, but even if we allow that was an accidental Kath-and-Kim-ism, when we tack it onto ‘the meat in the sandwich’ it’s still an absolute corker that deserves to enter the Mixed Metaphor Hall of Fame.

The other thing about mixed metaphors is that they have to be genuinely inadvertent to be worth keeping.  Anyone can make them up.  I could say, for instance, that tonight I’m going to “paint the town red till the cows come home”, or that ‘what’s sauce for the goose is worth two in the bush”, but that would be cheating and it’s no fun.  Prize mixed metaphors are forged in the heat of the moment and are best performed, in public, by public figures such as politicians under stress or in a hurry to express themselves. 

Mr Hackett’s utterance has gone straight to the pool-room, as it were – oh god this is fun! – straight to the treasure trove of verbal whimsy I’ve been collecting and writing about over the years, and into which I now dip to retrieve some other golden moments for your amusement and edification. 

This one comes from a priest whose lobbying briefly stalled the opening of Sydney’s heroin-injecting room in 1999: ‘I’ve set the ball rolling and the rock coming down the mountain is gathering a lot of moss.’  And there I was thinking that’s exactly what rolling stones didn’t do!       

Tim Fischer, former National Party leader and Deputy PM, famed for his willingness to give a soundbite if not for his eloquence, once referred to ‘a mushroom cloud in a teacup’.  What manner of thing is this, we wonder.  Mushroom clouds are usually associated with nuclear explosions.  Storms in teacups are minor affairs.  Was the genial Mr Fischer referring to a not-very-important major catastrophe?

Dr Bob Brown was no slouch at mixing metaphors. Smarting over political events in Tasmania in 1991 when the Greens were double-crossed by a deal between their Labor coalition partners and the opposition Libs, Brown referred to the deal as “a rapidly unfolding kettle of fish”.  What a gorgeous image.  It sounds like the kind of verbal jumble Joh Bjelke-Petersen was famous for.

Here’s a genuine Joh-ism.  “You can’t straddle a barbed-wire fence and keep both feet on the ground.”  Indeed you can’t!  Sir Joh has inadvertently created that rare thing: a mixed metaphor that encapsulates a truth and deserves to be a proverb!

Here’s one-time Northern Territory Chief Minister Marshall Perron discussing “omnibus” polling techniques: “Organisations polling on a raft of issues tie a series of clients together and ask about their preferences.”  This conjures up a delicious image of a floating raft of captive people.  If I was one of those clients I would state that my preference was to be untied and allowed to get out of the water. 

And here’s then NT Opposition Leader Brian Ede haranguing the government benches: “You’ve made your bed over the last 20 years, so go jump in the lake.”  Now if they jumped in the lake they wouldn’t be able to lie in their made bed, which is presumably what Ede wants them to do, and which is more usual in these circumstances. 

That sentiment about having to live with problems of your own creation is a popular one, and it often gets mangled:

“We have buttered our bread and now we have to lie on it.”

‘You’ve cooked your goose, now you’ll have to lie in it.’ 

Those two are from a collection culled from Hansard by the head of its reporting staff.  Here are some more beauties uttered by our pollies in moments of haste: 

• “This problem could be the stickiest wicket in the whole can of worms.”
• “Don’t throw the garbage out with the bathwater.”
• “We took the thunder out of his sails.”
• “You’ve been burning the midnight oil from both ends.”
• “It’s as easy as falling off a pie.”
• ‘Too many cooks and not enough Indians spoil the golden egg.’
• ‘A carrot at the end of the tunnel’.
• ‘A tiger doesn’t change its spots’. 

A couple from foreign contributors to finish up: “Malaysia used to think of itself as an oasis in the jungle of South East Asian economies, but now the chickens are coming home to roost.”  One wonders what an oasis in the jungle would look like – a big pile of dry sand?   

How about this one?  “I thought we started very, very brightly but then the Achilles Heel which has bitten us in the backside all year has stood out like a sore thumb”.  It’s almost too good to be true.  It looks like it was dreamt up in one of those bad writing competitions where you have to invent a silly mixed metaphor, only this one is authentic! It was uttered by Andy King, who was manager of Swindon Town FC from October 2000 to August 2001.  And I have the clipping to prove it. 

I’m still collecting them  All contributions gratefully received. 

See that quote above? It contains one of the best mixed metaphors I’ve seen in years.  It was published in the Hobart Mercury recently and was uttered by the bloke who wants to helicopter tourists in and out of Lake Malbena in the Tasmanian wilderness but is up against environmental opposition. 

What makes a champion mixed metaphor?  Let’s take this one as an example.  First, we strip off excess verbiage and strip it down to its naked glory:  ‘In terms of the thin edge of the world, I’m the meat in the sandwich.’

Well for a start you’ve got a hilariously impossible notion right there – ‘the thin edge of the world’.  I defy anyone to imagine such a thing as the thin edge of the world.  Mr Hackett may well have meant to say ‘the thin end of the wedge’, but even if we allow that was an accidental Kath-and-Kim-ism, when we tack it onto ‘the meat in the sandwich’ it’s still an absolute corker that deserves to enter the Mixed Metaphor Hall of Fame.

The other thing about mixed metaphors is that they have to be genuinely inadvertent to be worth keeping.  Anyone can make them up.  I could say, for instance, that tonight I’m going to “paint the town red till the cows come home”, or that ‘what’s sauce for the goose is worth two in the bush”, but that would be cheating and it’s no fun.  Prize mixed metaphors are forged in the heat of the moment and are best performed, in public, by public figures such as politicians under stress or in a hurry to express themselves. 

Mr Hackett’s utterance has gone straight to the pool-room, as it were – oh god this is fun! – straight to the treasure trove of verbal whimsy I’ve been collecting and writing about over the years, and into which I now dip to retrieve some other golden moments for your amusement and edification. 

This one comes from a priest whose lobbying briefly stalled the opening of Sydney’s heroin-injecting room in 1999: ‘I’ve set the ball rolling and the rock coming down the mountain is gathering a lot of moss.’  And there I was thinking that’s exactly what rolling stones didn’t do!       

Tim Fischer, former National Party leader and Deputy PM, famed for his willingness to give a soundbite if not for his eloquence, once referred to ‘a mushroom cloud in a teacup’.  What manner of thing is this, we wonder.  Mushroom clouds are usually associated with nuclear explosions.  Storms in teacups are minor affairs.  Was the genial Mr Fischer referring to a not-very-important major catastrophe?

Dr Bob Brown was no slouch at mixing metaphors. Smarting over political events in Tasmania in 1991 when the Greens were double-crossed by a deal between their Labor coalition partners and the opposition Libs, Brown referred to the deal as “a rapidly unfolding kettle of fish”.  What a gorgeous image.  It sounds like the kind of verbal jumble Joh Bjelke-Petersen was famous for.

Here’s a genuine Joh-ism.  “You can’t straddle a barbed-wire fence and keep both feet on the ground.”  Indeed you can’t!  Sir Joh has inadvertently created that rare thing: a mixed metaphor that encapsulates a truth and deserves to be a proverb!

Here’s one-time Northern Territory Chief Minister Marshall Perron discussing “omnibus” polling techniques: “Organisations polling on a raft of issues tie a series of clients together and ask about their preferences.”  This conjures up a delicious image of a floating raft of captive people.  If I was one of those clients I would state that my preference was to be untied and allowed to get out of the water. 

And here’s then NT Opposition Leader Brian Ede haranguing the government benches: “You’ve made your bed over the last 20 years, so go jump in the lake.”  Now if they jumped in the lake they wouldn’t be able to lie in their made bed, which is presumably what Ede wants them to do, and which is more usual in these circumstances. 

That sentiment about having to live with problems of your own creation is a popular one, and it often gets mangled:

“We have buttered our bread and now we have to lie on it.”

‘You’ve cooked your goose, now you’ll have to lie in it.’ 

Those two are from a collection culled from Hansard by the head of its reporting staff.  Here are some more beauties uttered by our pollies in moments of haste: 

• “This problem could be the stickiest wicket in the whole can of worms.”
• “Don’t throw the garbage out with the bathwater.”
• “We took the thunder out of his sails.”
• “You’ve been burning the midnight oil from both ends.”
• “It’s as easy as falling off a pie.”
• ‘Too many cooks and not enough Indians spoil the golden egg.’
• ‘A carrot at the end of the tunnel’.
• ‘A tiger doesn’t change its spots’. 

A couple from foreign contributors to finish up: “Malaysia used to think of itself as an oasis in the jungle of South East Asian economies, but now the chickens are coming home to roost.”  One wonders what an oasis in the jungle would look like – a big pile of dry sand?   

How about this one?  “I thought we started very, very brightly but then the Achilles Heel which has bitten us in the backside all year has stood out like a sore thumb”.  It’s almost too good to be true.  It looks like it was dreamt up in one of those bad writing competitions where you have to invent a silly mixed metaphor, only this one is authentic! It was uttered by Andy King, who was manager of Swindon Town FC from October 2000 to August 2001.  And I have the clipping to prove it. 

I’m still collecting them  All contributions gratefully received.