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Gere's gibberish gets a gong
LONDON, England -- Hollywood actor Richard Gere has won a dubious honour from Britain's Plain English Campaign -- for talking complete gibberish. Gere, once-voted World's Sexiest Man, picked up the Foot In Mouth prize on Wednesday for 2002's most baffling celebrity quote. "I know who I am. No one else knows who I am. If I was a giraffe, and someone said I was a snake, I'd think, no, actually I'm a giraffe," he told UK newspaper The Guardian in June, Reuters reported. Gere joins a select band of previous winners, including former England football manager Glenn Hoddle, British chancellor Gordon Brown and actress Alicia Silverstone. The awards are designed to draw attention to the need for plain speaking and are in their 23rd year. They were celebrated at a ceremony in Central London on Wednesday. The campaign also handed out 10 Golden Bull awards for the year's worst examples of gobbledygook, the UK's Press Association reported. One winner, Halifax General Insurance Services, wrote to one baffled customer: "I can confirm that you have not informed us of a conservatory that has never been built and that you have not been charged any extra for one built." Another went to a lawyer who suggested the replacement for the word "container" in a patent application should be "a receptacle having at least one exterior surface and a plurality of walls defining a discrete object receiving volume". A government education document described the act of laying a brick in a wall as "to install a component into the structural fabric". Other notable winners included a paragraph from the Government's Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act of 2002. The paragraph read: "The Scottish Ministers may by order amend subsection (1) of section 57 or paragraph (a) or (b) of subsection (2) of section 58 so as to substitute for the number of years for the time being mentioned in the provision in question such other number of years (not being a number which exceeds that being mentioned in the provision as originally enacted) as may be specified in the order." Plain Speaking Campaign spokesman John Lister told the Press Association: "These are simply the most ludicrous examples we have found during the year. "Stodgy, long-winded writing is still wasting time and money and cheating people of the chance to make an informed decision," he added. But charity Help the Aged, Newcastle City Council and British newspaper the Daily Mirror all won positive awards for their clear, easy-to-understand writing. Reuters contributed to this report.
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