What is the most pressing problem facing the BBC? Is it the plans to cut hundreds of jobs, or the arguments over its political independence? No: evidently it is the command of English displayed by its presenters. That, at any rate, seems to be the set of priorities behind the call for the BBC to appoint a "language tsar" to provide "discreet advice" on its journalists' grammar and vocabulary.

In fact, the BBC is already engaged in a laudable public consultation on some matters of vocabulary, as in the publication of its style guide for reporting on Israel/Palestine, where it gives its rationale for trying to avoid Unspeak on either side. This does not seem to be what worries the current complainers, however: they are more concerned about pressing matters of sentence construction. So, let's see the experts in action.

The proposal was explained on this morning's Today programme (listen again here) by Ian Bruton-Simmonds, a member of the Queen's English Society. He said, and I quote: "There must be a language adviser sitting in Broadcast House. He must have at least the knowledge of English that I've got [...] If you make a mistake ... Let us say, er, you give a sentence that is, that can be improved ... even Shakespeare, if he was in your position, under that pressure, is going to make a mistake now and again. If the language adviser says to you, privately, 'You've ... this sentence you said, here is a sentence ... better' it - at once you would say 'Thanks'."

I don't know about BBC presenters, but if a "language adviser" actually said to me: "This sentence you said, here is a sentence ... better," I would probably not say "Thanks" but wonder whether he could be trusted to critique anybody's English at all, since he would appear to be engaged in inept mental translation from a foreign mother tongue. You might think it mischievous of me to make an accurate transcription of Bruton-Simmonds's words, but it illuminates a crucial point - that spoken language, the speech of even the most intelligent and eloquent individuals, is always stuffed with hesitations and loose grammar, starting and stopping, revising itself in mid-flow, and so on. Seeing it written down exactly as it was spoken is always going to be embarrassing.

The question is: does it matter? Does this sort of thing on public radio lead to a general degradation of the language, looser morals, and finally a hairy populace of monosyllabic grunters? The case is not proven. A Radio 4 listener rapidly emailed in glee to the programme, pointing out that Bruton-Simmonds had said "Shakespeare, if he was" instead of "Shakespeare, if he were", denouncing it as a "gaffe". But of course there could be no confusion over what Bruton-Simmonds meant. Plenty of people use a conditional "was" in speech where they would be careful to write "were", perhaps because "were" can sound finicky or pompous in conversation, or perhaps in tribute to Midge Ure's heroic 1980s stand against the grammar police, If I Was. To pounce upon this kind of thing as an error to be rooted out and destroyed is silly.

More than silly, it can be artistically noxious. Recently I was distraught, on watching the first episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, to see that the grammar fetishists had apparently won some sort of idiotic campaign to "correct" one of the most resonant lines of modern popular culture. No longer was the spaceship's mission "to boldly go where no man has gone before", but "to go boldly". As any fule kno, the "rule" against split infinitives arises from a specious analogy with Latin (Latin infinitives are single words, and so can't be split); there is no basis for it at all in English.

Finally, it must be acknowledged that the barmy dream of Bruton-Simmonds and his colleagues could only be fully achieved if every word spoken on the BBC were pre-scripted. For one thing, that would make for fantastically boring and unrevealing interviews. In the meantime, perhaps the steam that spurts from the grammar fetishists' ears could be harnessed as an alternative energy source. At least in that way they could prove themselves useful.