Professor Johnbull wows TV viewers with bombastic English
15:52
Professor
Johnbull wows TV viewers with bombastic English
As Professor
Johnbull, the new drama series sponsored by grandmasters of data, Globacom,
debuted on national television last Tuesday, fans of the lead character played
by Kanayo O. Kanayo have expressed amusement at his penchant for grandiloquent
vocabulary.
The professor in the opening montage describes the various characters in words ranging from "unswerving, philanderer, gregarious, acquiescent, prevaricator, sedulous, gullible, adjudicator and confusionist," while he describes himself professorially as "erudite."
The professor in the opening montage describes the various characters in words ranging from "unswerving, philanderer, gregarious, acquiescent, prevaricator, sedulous, gullible, adjudicator and confusionist," while he describes himself professorially as "erudite."
While upbraiding his house help, Caro, played by Mercy Johnson-Okojie for turning herself into the ‘’Witch of Endor," Professor Johnbull opines that her rather queer way of differentiating between two alphabets was an "exhibition of primitively atavistic tendencies’" and "unabashed educational jingoism."
Consequently, he accuses his daughter,
Elizabeth (Queen Nwokoye) of failure to subject the housemaid to
"anthropological larynphalothrophy" before she was employed. The
university egghead, also accused his son Churchill of "filial
insubordination."
When he encounters the fake D’banj at
Olaniyi (Yomi Fash-Lanso’s) restaurant, he views his sobriquet, Kokomaster
as an anomaly. "The Cocoa?", he quipped. "You mean
somebody's name is cocoa. Cocoa belongs to the genus theobroma family,
subfamily sterculioidea of the mallow family. The botanical name is theobroma
cacao. How can somebody's name be cocoa? That is taxonimical anomaly.
Just as the argument was becoming
laborious to D’banj, he told the erudite elderly man that he would rather
refrain from entering into an argument with him. The scholarly man subsequently
described the no-argument stance as "chivalrous, courteous and
conciliatory."
At his home to which he had invited the
fake music star, Professor Johnbull offers his guests a plate of garden egg as
is customary among the Igbo tribe. D’banj and his accomplices settled to
munch the fruit while Professor Johnbull acknowledges that his guests had
sufficiently "massaged their phalanges" and asked the house maid to
return the bowel of water used in washing hands.
But as the drama reached its denouement
where Churchill, Professor’s son entered to blow the lid off the real identity
of the impostor, the professor in obvious disbelief of the extent of deceit,
threw brickbats at the fake music icon, noting that he had committed an act of "catastrophic
deception’" which could lead to a "conflagration of hostility"
as well as a "vilified opprobrium."
In all, the character Professor
Johnbull is a stereotype for a normal academic who loves to display his
brilliance by employing highfalutin grammar in his bid to oppress, impress or
coerce whoever happens to be on the receiving end of his bombastic utterances.
In addition to this, his profile as a
respected academic and community leader puts him in good stead to deliver
homilies on good conduct, discipline and moral rectitude and to ensure that the
full weight of the law falls on whoever contravenes set social standards of
morality.
The first episode of the drama which
aired on NTA Network, NTA International and Startimes on Tuesday from 8.30 p.m.
to 9 p.m. received wide acclaim from viewers. Repeat broadcast holds on the
same stations from 8.30pm to 9pm on Fridays. It's a powerful clincher from
Globacom, the grandmasters of data.
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