The column that has fun with the smaller mistakes and missteps of Australia’s mainstream mediocre; that pays homage to those sweet little fishes that individually don’t amount to a full meal but collectively can cause a tummy upset over the overall state of the once great and noble craft of journalism in this country.

It’s a rare thing indeed when this column has a little peck, so to speak, at our good friends at the ABC’s Media Watch.

Even now, we’re a bit reluctant to ruffle the show’s feathers, not 100 per cent sure that host Linton Besser has stuffed up just a little; laid a slightly smelly egg if you like.

What are we talking about? Monday night’s program was being monitored in The Bug’s main mezzanine pod by the bitter and twisted, washed-up, old hacks who compile MB when Besser said this of Donald Trump facing major problems on several fronts: “Now the crows have come home to roost”.

“What the fuck!” our compilers shouted in unison before turning to one another and saying: “Whose shout?”

Not one of them could ever recall that famous saying, The chickens have come home to roost, being tweaked in such a way.

“The origin of the idiom chickens come home to roost dates back to the 14th century. Its first recorded usage is found in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Parson’s Tale where he pens, “And ofte tyme swich cursynge wrongfully retorneth agayn to hym that curseth, as a bryd that retorneth agayn to his owene nest” offered one of our staffers, taking surreptitious glances at one online source he had quickly called up.

“However,” another Bug media reviewer added, reading from his smart phone on his lap: “The specific phrasing chickens come home to roost is attributed to Robert Southey, who introduced it in his 1810 poem, The Curse of Kehama: “Curses are like young chicken: they always come home to roost.” Thus, the idiom we recognize today was born.”

After Media Watch finished, all of our staff members, fully cognisant of the fact that English is an evolving beast and moveable feast, went online to see if somehow Besser was just one of many championing a sensible metamorphosis of one old famous saying to something more 21st Century, given that not a lot of people have chooks anymore, yet every bloody park in Australia now seems to be infected with those raucous black bastards!

No. Apparently not. Well, not yet anyway.

But if influential journos such as Besser, who has won more Walkley awards then any one person on the BUG roster, have their way, we can see the very strongly likelihood well down the track that some scribe is going to say “Now the bin chickens have come home to roost!” and someone at The Bug is going to shout: “Bullshit! The saying is the crows have come to roost”, and adding after looking at his even-smarter phone hidden behind his jug of rum and coke: “Wikipedia attributes that saying to some chap called Linton Besser late in the first quarter of this century who worked at the national broadcaster Murdoch Broadcasting Corporation back when it was called something else.”

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