It helps if you’ve been on Strictly Come Dancing, but anyone who has been in the public eye for more than about two minutes is eligible

“National treasures are often fools and worse: dare I say that until last year Jimmy Savile was perhaps the greatest of them all?” Tanya Gold wrote in the Guardian in January. A flick through the newspapers around the time of Savile’s death – less than two years ago, though it seems a lot longer – readily confirms this.

“It made me smile to see national treasure [my italics], Sir Jimmy Savile, being laid to rest in his usual unconventional style … It’s heartwarming to see that even after passing away, Sir Jimmy can still bring a smile to people.” (The Sun)

“He was the irrepressible TV presenter who made the wishes of hundreds of children come true and raised more than £40m for charity. Last night tributes poured in for national treasure Sir Jimmy Savile, who died yesterday aged 84.” (Sunday Mirror)

“The death of Sir Jimmy Savile just two days before his 85th birthday leaves the world a poorer place … His most important work was as a tireless charity fundraiser. We have lost a national treasure.” (Sunday People)

Well, journalists were not the only people to misjudge Jimmy Savile. Most of the country did. But you might have thought newspapers would be a bit more careful about bestowing national treasure status on celebrities in the wake of Savile’s fall from grace. Not a bit of it.

The trouble is that buzzwords and phrases are like the latest smartphone: once one writer or broadcaster has used it, they all want one. And national treasure is the phrase of the decade.

Originally reserved for figures who enjoyed the affection of a large part of the nation – Stephen Fry or Joanna Lumley, perhaps – the term has now been extended to anyone about whom the writer can’t think of anything more original to say.

If you aspire to be one, your best bet is to be nearing the end of a long career on television, the big screen or both. Barbara Windsor, a star of the Carry On films before she became landlady of the Queen Vic in EastEnders, has been a national treasure for years. Elderly or retired sports commentators are guaranteed national treasure status: Henry Blofeld, Peter Alliss and Murray Walker, for example. Clare Balding is probably the current favourite treasure. Anyone would be happy to have her as a big sister, which I reckon is as good a test as any of whether the epithet is deserved.

National treasures can be old (Sir David Attenborough, Sir Paul McCartney) or young (Laura Robson, Joe Root). Politicians can become national treasures, but only if they are too old to do any harm (Tony Benn) or have been on Strictly Come Dancing (Ann Widdecombe).

The papers all love a national treasure, but they are not always unanimous. On 17 May, the Daily Telegraph revealed that John Humphrys was not a national treasure. All was not lost for the Today presenter, however, because by 8 June the Daily Express had acclaimed him as one after all.

There are more national treasures than ever. A search through the archives reveals more than 1,100 uses of the phrase in UK national newspapers in the year to 21 July. (Ten years ago, the annual figure was a steady 500 or so.) You don’t even have to be alive. The late astronomer Sir Patrick Moore and Rupert Murdoch’s late mother, Dame Elisabeth, were awarded posthumous national treasuredom.

Nor do you have to be a person: the band Madness, the BBC programme Time Team, the BBC itself, Glastonbury, Marks & Spencer, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the Irish Hurling League final and the Jamaican boys’ and girls’ athletics championships have all been accorded national treasure status in one or more newspapers. Dare I suggest that all this treasure has become devalued?

The more far-fetched the nominations are, the more likely they are to appear in Private Eye’s National Treasures column, the more it seems to encourage some writers to conjure up ever less appropriate candidates. Unlikely recent national treasures include the England cricketer Jonathan Trott, the broadcaster Eddie Mair, the actor Miriam Margolyes and the writer Stephen Poliakoff. I’ve nothing against any of these people, and they have all achieved distinction in their field, but at this rate anyone who has been in the public eye for more than about two minutes is going to be claimed by some journalist, somewhere, as a national treasure.

And of course we now have a whole new genre of former national treasures who have been disgraced, notably Savile and Stuart Hall, with the possibility of more to come. No one appears to have questioned whether the media were too ready to acclaim national treasures in the first place, but then most newspapers have short memories and rely on their readers to be the same.

After a while, national treasure hunting becomes tedious and I expect even journalists will eventually tire of it as new buzzwords come along. Trawling through the archives, it was refreshing to find a report about not a clapped-out entertainer or minor public figure, but the final frontier. Nasa, it turns out, has a special category for moon rocks and other geological specimens brought back by various missions into space.

National treasure.

For Who the Bell Tolls: One Man’s Quest for Grammatical Perfection, by David Marsh, will be published by Guardian Faber in the autumn.

via Media: Mind your language | theguardian.com http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mind-your-language/2013/jul/26/mind-your-language-national-treasure