The Foot in Mouth Award is presented each year by the Plain English Campaign for "a baffling comment by a public figure". The award was first made in 1993, when it was given to Ted Dexter, the chairman of selectors for the England cricket team. It was awarded again the following year, and after a two year break, annually from 1997.
The Plain English Campaign was set up in 1979 when the founder, Chrissie Maher, shredded hundreds of jargon-filled forms and documents in Parliament Square, London. The group made their first awards the next year, rewarding those organisations that used plain English, and highlighting those that did not. Although the Foot in Mouth award was first made in 1993, a specific acknowledgment was made to a comment by Dan Quayle, Vice President of the United States in 1991.
The award has been presented 17 times, and only Rhodri Morgan has received it more than once. The Welsh politician won in both 1998 and 2005, and made a light-hearted response to his second win, claiming that the first award had "made name." Politicians have been recipients of the award more times than any other group of people, collecting it on eight occasions; people from the world of sport have won four times. The 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush received the award in 2008, with the subtitle "Lifetime Achievement Award", given not for a single quote, but for his continued "services to gobbledygook".
Read more about Foot In Mouth Award: Winners
Famous quotes containing the words foot in, foot, mouth and/or award:
“One foot in each great ocean
Is a record stride or stretch.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“The foot of the heavenly ladder, which we have got to mount in order to reach the higher regions, has to be fixed firmly in every-day life, so that everybody may be able to climb up it along with us. When people then find that they have got climbed up higher and higher into a marvelous, magical world, they will feel that that realm, too, belongs to their ordinary, every-day life, and is, merely, the wonderful and most glorious part thereof.”
—E.T.A.W. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus Wilhelm)
“Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark:M”I wasn’t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.””
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)