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The biggest audience for a Welsh language lesson ever is due to be achieved on Jeremy Vine’s Radio Two programme on St David’s Day.

Mr Vine will be fulfilling a promise to learn some of the language after a contributor to his show last year trotted out the old story that people in pubs switch from speaking English to Welsh when non-Welsh-speaking strangers walk in.

A man from Pontypridd told the programme: “I don’t want to speak [Welsh], it’s a horrible language. If you go into any pub in west Wales, or north Wales, they’re all there speaking English. As soon as they hear my accent, they start changing into Welsh, so we can’t understand them.”

A row erupted after the item was repeated in a review of the year programme at the end of 2018. One user criticised the review for giving air time “to the tired old trope about walking into a pub and people switching to English”, branding it “nonsense”. When some people compared speaking the Welsh language in Wales to using French in France, Mr Vine responded on Twitter: “Is France in the UK?”

The tweet has since been deleted.

Replying to a Twitter user who suggested he apologised or explained, Mr Vine said: ‘My tweet was misconstrued! I was pointing out that the listener on my show who complained about people not speaking English to him in Wales was not quite the same as a Brit in Paris who complains no-one speaks English there. Didn’t mean to offend.”

Now Mr Vine will be making amends by having a 10-minute Welsh lesson live on air on the Friday, March 1, lunchtime edition of his show. Giving the lesson will be Aran Jones, a leading Welsh-language communities campaigner who runs courses from the SaySomethinginWelsh company he co-founded 10 years ago.

Mr Jones, who lives near Caernarfon , said: “I have to say that Jeremy Vine has responded very well to what happened.

“The suggestion that he learn some Welsh came from him, and I know he is genuinely interested in doing so.”

He said he had contacted the radio presenter by Twitter after the row that broke out on social media when the item was broadcast: “Twitter can encourage people to take extreme positions, but I was looking for a positive outcome.

“He’s a London-based journalist who understandably knew very little about the Welsh language. I believe most English people are fair-minded, and respond positively when they understand situations better. This is a great opportunity to get a positive message about the language across.”

The lesson awaiting Mr Vine will be based on a sentence which Mr Jones won’t reveal in advance so the presenter’s response will be fresh.

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