Silly season is almost here.
Or so we hear in the media.
But what does silly season mean? Where does the saying come from? And does it exist at all?
Silly season was a phrase coined right here in the UK and is actually connected to the annual shut down of parliament over the summer months.
Parliament has breaks called recesses during the year when it doesn’t meet and is effectively closed. Specific dates are published each year but as a rough rule of thumb for the summer months, parliament is in recess from late July to early September, in parallel with the school summer holidays. The reason why this resulted in the phrase “silly season” is because in terms of exciting or interesting news, the press noticed a marked decrease in what might be considered more serious material during the recess. Silly season commenced, where stories that wouldn’t normally see the light of day made an appearance! Perhaps it could be referred to as the “clutching at straws” cycle of news?!
The first reference to the phrase was seen in the Saturday Review edition of 13 July 1861 of The Times where the following was written:
“during the months of autumn [, w]hen Parliament is no longer sitting and the gay world is no longer gathered together in London, something very different is supposed to do for the remnant of the public from what is needed in the politer portions of the year. The Times’s great men have doubtless gone out of town, like other great men. … The hands which at other times wield the pen for our instruction are now wielding the gun on a Scotch moor or the Alpenstock on a Swiss mountain. Work is left to feebler hands. … In those months the great oracle becomes —what at other times it is not—simply silly. In spring and early summer, the Times is often violent, unfair, fallacious, inconsistent, intentionally unmeaning, even positively blundering, but it is very seldom merely silly. … In the dead of autumn, when the second and third rate hands are on, we sink from nonsense written with a purpose to nonsense written because the writer must write either nonsense or nothing.”
Journalists are poised and ready for the barrage of extravagant, silly and downright nonsensical stories that will grace the front pages of the newspapers… that is before the heavy focus on Brexit rears its head again in the Autumn!
Our top 5 amusing silly season stories we found online as part of researching this article are:
5. The (non) missing Arg from Towie – this made the news in 2014 when James Argent from ITV’s reality TV show Towie failed to turn up for a flight, triggering concerns by his family that he’d gone missing. He’d simply gone to the wrong airport.
4. How to avoid sunlounger stress – the summer holiday bugbear of many Brits is the reserving of sunloungers early in the morning. Thomas Cook’s answer to the problem? Allowing people to pre-book their sunlounger to prevent the sun towel wars!
3. Talk about crossed purposes… – this one is very sweet! A lovesick couple passed each other mid-flight when they both tried to surprise their partner with a round-the-world visit.
2. “The sand is too wet” TripAdvisor review – one disgruntled holidaymaker took the time to complain on TripAdvisor that the sand at Perranporth beach was too wet to build sandcastles….
And number 1 is:
The one about the dolphin midwife – yes, you’ve read that correctly! A woman who wanted the midwife for her unborn child to be a dolphin…
We wonder what delights will be in store this year?!