“Oh, you’re such a legend,” my daughter will tell me when I successfully achieve something that she has asked me to do. I’m such a legend?  I don’t think so.

In my day a legend was someone very famous who had done something absolutely amazing and mind blowing, mostly to do with making life better for every other living soul on the planet.  And without exception, in my day, legends were dead. Not so nowadays, it seems.  There’s a new category of legend apparently, recently created.  It’s entitled a “Living Legend” category.  And astonishingly almost anyone can lay claim to being a living legend.  It just requires someone else to label you a living legend. And then you are one.

Reason I am writing this at all is that today I acquired a flyer from The Great Courses establishment, announcing that they are offering courses from “The World’s Greatest Professors at Your Fingertips”.  This flyer came free in a magazine.  And these courses are taught by “Passionate, erudite, living legend lecturers” is what the flyer advertises.

I’m sorry – what?  Living legend lecturers?  Which planet do the promoters of “The Great Courses” think we have all just fallen off?  Really?  For goodness sake …

I’m as aware as any other current and savvy marketer that innovative and expansive, and even exaggerative approaches and language are all required these days to get a brand noticed.  But there is a limit, is there not?  To suggest that your own particular brand or product utilises living legends is pushing it a bit far.  Do you not think?

What happened to the flyer and all its small print?  Binned.

Quite unfortunate really.  I did actually like the look of one or two of those courses. But I definitely could not bear to be taught or guided by someone who considers themself to be a living legend.  That really would be overstepping the mark in my book.