NEWSFLASH:

Mrs Malaprop is alive and well and living in the Australian jungle.

She goes by the name of Gemma Collins (no, I hadn't heard of her either - it seems she is a star of a reality show called The Only Way Is Excess or some such) and on Sunday night's opening edition of I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here on ITV she took a hammer to the English language and beat it into submission.

With tear-stained mascara, looking for all the world like the portrait Alice Cooper hides in his attic, she attempted to come to terms with the fact her stint on the show had got off to a less than auspicious start. "It's like the turtle and the slug," she wailed, "or the horse and the rabbit." [See footnote]

I felt for her, I really did. She was up the creek without a leg to stand on, and as nervous as a bag of kittens on a hot tin roof.

We have all been there, done it, worn the sweatshirt. Believe it or not, I've been known to mix the odd metaphor or two. Honest engine.

Under pressure, idiomatic English can be a minefield that can trip up even the best of us and punch us in the solar panel. Not that I would claim that status for myself. Pride comes before you leap.

The master of this black art was the former US President George W Bush, who was responsible for such gems as "free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat" and "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family".

He may or may not have been influenced by his father's erstwhile running mate, Dan Quayle, a linguine genius in his own right, who famously insisted "Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child" and boasted his regime would turn out "the best-educated American people in the world".

It's not nice to mock the affected, though. We all know how this sort of thing happens - you shoot off your mouth while your brain is still on the starting blocks.

That's why, these days, I take my time over this column. I don't just charge in like a bull at a china gate. Even if it means ripping up the screen and starting again. Even if progress is so painfully slow it's like watching the grass dry. I don't care. Rome wasn't built in a vacuum.

l Footnote: For the benefit of Ms Collins, I have it on good authority the rabbit beat the horse by leading it to water and forcing it to drink.