Dominic George: Here's a toast to eloquence and, er, ale

Farming Show guest, Black Cap Aaron Redmond, had difficulty pronouncing this man's name - Malakai Fekitoa.

I have very few talents in this life, a fact which my wife is fond of reminding me of. I can't build anything, can't repair anything, can't paint anything ... I'm the guy they're talking about in that DIY ad on telly when they say "you don't wanna be that guy" - well that's me.

When I think of my skill set, I'm reminded of former Warrior Michael Luck's assessment of team mate Kevin Locke a few years ago on Radio Sport when he said: "When God was handing out brains 'Knobby' was probably away buying magic beans." Substitute brains for handyman skills and there I am. I would also buy magic beans given half a chance.

But it's not all entirely hopeless; when it comes to words and beer I'm doing okay. Like most skills, they're inherent. With words I never learned any of the rules they taught in school about verbs and adjectives and I never really had to sit down and learn how to spell words either; if I saw it once I would generally remember it.

This of course is helpful when it comes to pronunciation - the look and sound of a word are one in the same thing to me. No real surprises then that I've wound up using words to make a living, albeit a meagre one.

What is staggering, though, is the number of broadcasters in this country who struggle with words, as remarkable as that sounds. You would expect the average dairy farmer to be able to milk a cow and you would expect the average broadcaster to be able to at least speak properly.

But we seem to have an extraordinary amount of stuttering, lisping, slack-jawed halfwits operating in this country, especially on television. I've heard TV news reporters, for example, pronounce the 's' in debris, pronounce cache as 'catch'. Minor offences? Not when it's your job ... No matter though, say the bosses - you're pretty and cheap!

We're not immune on the Farming Show to cocking up words. In fact, it can be quite entertaining. That's why we've got in the habit of humiliating studio guests by handing them a copy of the hitherto unseen sports news and getting them to read it live on air! It can provide a fair few giggles watching the look of abject terror and confusion engulf a guest's face as they're confronted with a Sri Lankan cricketer or an Eastern European tennis player's name.

A personal favourite was former Black Cap Aaron Redmond who chucked in the towel when reading a story about a rugby player of Polynesian descent; poor Aaron had been in England and hadn't heard of the impressive Highlanders and All Blacks midfielder Malakai Fekitoa, and it showed. The poor boy took one look at the alphabet soup in front of him, uttered a fearful "oh no..." and proceeded to completely butcher the name entirely.

It wouldn't have taken Redders long to feel better about himself, though, if he stayed tuned to the Farming Show for any length of time.

Host Jamie Mackay has a couple of words that get him every time and the glorious thing is I'm sure he's got no idea he's taking the butcher's knife to them every time they leave his lips. The word 'performance' inevitably comes out as 'preformance', while the month of 'September' gets sliced and diced and put through the mincer eventually emerging as the word 'Sektember'. Where the k comes from I've got no idea but, until I receive my mythical gift that he purportedly brought back from the Farming and Footy Tour to the UK, I'm paying it no more attention.

Which brings me to my second talent - beer. I displayed my full range of abilities at the Dunedin Craft Beer and Food Festival at Forsyth Barr Stadium on the weekend, sipping, tasting, quaffing and eventually guzzling my way through some of the finest boutique ales this country has to offer. While Farming Show online editor Hanoi Jane has written about her distaste for the amber nectar, I've grown to love it more and more as the years go on.

I practised with a certain amount of vigour as a youngster and have managed to craft a relatively capable palette, whether it be Pale Ale, Pilsner or Porter. It didn't come naturally, though, and I was never much of sculler. But, like any worthwhile endeavour, if you stick at it, put in the hard yards and keep your eye on the prize, you never know what can happen!

Although, like anything, moderation is the key. I heard a talkback caller on the radio a week or so ago - your classic 'Shazza from Kaitangata' who'd clearly spent the best part of a lifetime drinking the kind of beer you wouldn't find at a beer festival. She began by proclaiming in that time-honoured manner of the inherent racist, "Now, I'm not a racialist, but..." Is that the right use of that word Shazza?