Answer: no, but the College of Journalism is always looking for new opportunities ...
The Telegraph is retreading old material here: its columnist Gerald Warner sounded off on a very similar subject in August under the headline: "Can we please wave goodbye to all this un-British conversational hand-waving and gesticulation?"
Warner's ire was directed at BBC Newsnight contributors rather than presenters. As a self-styled "polemical commentator", he managed to throw in gratuitous complaints against women and the French in his analysis of the hand-waving phenomenon:
"It may also reflect the increasing feminisation of society. Women have always conversed with a degree of gesticulation. Now, virile-seeming men in the prime of youth and vigour are flexing their wrists and digits like schoolgirls enthusing over the games mistress. The traditional conversational stance of the English male was an immobile, calm posture, with arms at rest and the hands possibly clasped on the surface in front of him, or otherwise leisurely disposed. Today, the English conversationalist looks like a French mime artist with St Vitus' dance."
If CoJo does set up a course, I wonder if Andrew Marr (above) would, er, lend a hand?
