Dennis Waterman’s pathetic passives
Dennis Waterman’s astonishing comments on domestic violence in the Mirror are an object lesson in how not to use the passive voice – and show how revealing it can be when you do use it.
In grammatical terms, the passive voice is formed with an auxiliary verb (usually ‘to be’ or ‘to get’) plus a participle of a transitive verb. The subject of the sentence is the person or thing being acted upon (the ‘patient’) rather than the person or thing taking action (the ‘agent’).
It’s much clearer with an example. This sentence is passive:
The loo seat has been left up again
…whereas this one is active:
You’ve left the loo seat up again!
As this example shows, it’s possible to avoid mentioning the agent completely, which has the effect of obscuring or diffusing responsibility. Something was done, but it’s not clear who actually did it.
Sometimes, this can be useful. There are occasions when you need to describe a situation without ascribing responsibility, because such a remark would probably be construed as blame:
The amends to the document haven’t been done yet
However, by the same token, the passive can be used to weasel your way out of culpability. Let’s review those classic Waterman quotes in full:
She certainly wasn’t a beaten wife, she was hit and that’s different.

With this majestic double-barrelled evasion, Waterman erases himself from the picture completely. Whatever went on in that marriage, it clearly wasn’t anything to do with him.
First we get ‘she wasn’t a beaten wife’, which uses a personal characterisation (‘beaten wife’) to describe a physical event (being beaten). This makes the beating an attribute of the wife, rather than an action of the husband.
Then we have ‘she was hit’, which is a classic passive-case reworking of ‘I hit her’. Again, by making Rula Lenska the subject, Waterman implicitly lays the blame at her door. What was she thinking of, being hit like that?
It doesn’t end there:
if a woman is a bit of a power freak and determined to put you down, and if you’re not bright enough to do it with words, it can happen. And it did happen in my case.
What ‘can happen’ exactly, Dennis? A troublesome event like, oh I don’t know, punching your wife in the face? Yes, that does happen and it’s a right pain – like a rain shower just as you’re starting a round of golf. ‘It did happen in my case’ is a roundabout, passive way of saying ‘I did it’.
Something must have brought it on. When frustration builds up and you can’t think of a way out… It happened and I’m very, very ashamed of it.
Again, ‘it happened’, not ‘I did it’. But again, it really wasn’t Waterman’s fault – ‘something must have brought it on’. And my guess is that ‘something’ wasn’t Waterman’s free will, or his capacity to think, but some perniciously irritating attribute of his ex-wife.
But the worst of all has to be this:
It’s not difficult for a woman to make a man hit her.
This isn’t a passive construction, but the sense is the same: the five-year-old’s plea of ‘look what you made me do!’ Like rape victims who bring it on themselves by wearing particular clothes or leaving the house at night, Lenska practically asked for a beating by being so ‘intelligent’ – the witch.
Contrast that verbal ignominy with the way Lenska herself describes events:
There were times when he hit me. I became the object of his hate.
‘He hit me’ is unambiguous, but note how she avoids saying ‘he hated me’. Instead, Waterman’s hate is characterised as a ‘thing’, while Lenska passively becomes its object. This convoluted construction again removes Waterman from the picture, while framing his hating in a rather abstract way – but who can blame someone for shying away from such a painful truth?
Clearly, Waterman always likes to have the last word, so here goes:
It’s been suggested that I’m chauvinistic but I don’t think I am, I’m just… I think there is a place for women at home.
So where would that be, Dennis? In the kitchen? Or crouching under the stairs, bleeding and terrified, dialling 999?
Comments (10)
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This is a great analysis of “the weasel” at work. Hopefully I can use these powers for good, not evil, one day.
A well written piece. It happens
You write: “Waterman erases himself from the picture completely. Whatever went on in that marriage, it clearly wasn’t anything to do with him.” You seem to have missed the parts where he says: “I lashed out … I’m very, very ashamed of it … I must have punched her one time ’cause she did have a black eye. Afterwards, I felt utterly ashamed.”
I’m not saying you’re wrong about his use of the passive voice to distance himself from events, but it’s deceptive of you to imply as you do that he nowhere takes responsibility for them.
Darien,
“I must have punched her one time ’cause she did have a black eye” …… like there’s a slim possibility someone else came in overnight and did it instead?!
Its not quite the same as, “I punched my wife so hard she had a hemorrhage on the side of her face.”
I reckon to all intents and purposes the blogpost is accurate.
Bev: I’m not sure what you mean by saying that Albrighton’s post is accurate “to all intents and purposes”. Its principal intent, so far as I can see, is to criticise Dennis Waterman for “erasing himself from the picture completely” – a charge that simply isn’t supportable.
I do see that Waterman uses some quite avoidant and detached phrases. This is hardly surprising from someone discussing events of which they are self-avowedly “utterly ashamed”, but I wouldn’t quibble if you wanted to argue that this makes him seem, at these points, reluctant to take responsibility.
But to present these phrases as the whole story, while excluding the parts where he DOES accept responsibility is, in my view, simply dishonest.
@Darien
As is clear in context, ‘Waterman erases himself from the picture…’ refers to the quote beginning ‘She certainly wasn’t a beaten wife’ rather than Waterman’s overall attitude.
The clue is in the first part of my sentence, ‘With this majestic double-barrelled evasion…’, which you left out when you quoted me.
I’m not purporting to tell ‘the whole story’ – that’s why I linked to the Mirror, where people can read it for themselves. The theme of this post is what we can infer from the language he uses in the quotes I’ve selected. I accept that missing out those other quotes might skew the picture a little, but not much. In the original article, Waterman spends a lot more time justifying himself than taking the rap – and his confession hardly mitigates the other stuff he comes out with.
Hi Tom: Sorry to say, I missed the intended force of that first part of your sentence – because the sentence that follows it seems strongly to imply that you were indeed referring to Waterman’s overall attitude. Happy to retract accusation of dishonesty, with apology. But it was a misreading I only reached because you had missed out some very relevant quotes!
“Happy to retract accusation of dishonesty, with apology.”
@Tom: What’s that you were you saying about the passive voice?
Given his mastery of passive voice, government would warmly embrace Waterman’s linguistic skills.
re Paul’s comment, how about Ronald Reagan’s ”Mistakes were made” 😉