John Major is not a Nigerian but a Victorian

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Simon Hoggart had a theory about John Major's way of speaking:

It was always my theory that John Major was a Nigerian who had learned English from the battered paperbacks he had borrowed at an up-country British Council library. Hence his curiously dated language, such as "fine words butter no parsnips".

But the latest edition of Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart's Leading podcast makes it clear that this is not the reason Major talks the way he does.

The true explanation is that John Major is a Victorian. or at least learnt many figures of speech from a Victorian. His father was born in 1879 and was 64 when Major was born.

In the presenters' discussion after the interview, Campbell suggests that Major's old-fashioned way of talking was one of the things that made him popular and that he owes it to his unusual background.