Professor Johnbull wows TV viewers with bombastic English

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."

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.

Source: Professor Johnbull wows TV viewers with bombastic English