Hands up, if you’re hacked off by modern parlance

‘Can I get a cawfee?” That’s one of them. Phrases I loathe, I mean. Tom Shakespeare started it on BBC Radio 4’s A Point of View when he explained why he hated “going forward”. An “inelegant replacement for ‘in future’,” Shakespeare railed magnificently, “a vile phrase from the business world” and “like a contagious verruca began to pollute the language” of normal people.

Radio 4 joined in the fun, asking: “What is a phrase or expression that you cannot stand?” Uh-oh. Light blue touchpaper and stand well back!

The listeners needed no invite. Especially as most of them believe it should be “invitation”, because using “invite” as a noun is an abomination.

Like basically all of our kids who like literally can’t utter a like sentence without, you know, basically saying hideous things like, “I’m good, thanks” when you offer them a hot beverage.

“No, you are not good, young man. You are well, you are fine, at a pinch you are OK, but you most certainly are not good.”

Why did nicely brought-up English children have to start speaking like rap artists raised as kids on the south side of Chicago? The same kids, by the way, who drawl the aforementioned “Can I get a cawfee?”

And before you take up the Basildon Bond, Marjorie, don’t tick me off for using “kids” instead of “children”. That fight is Agincourt compared to what we’re up against today.

For a while, I conducted a lonely rearguard action against “Let’s go, guys”. Preparing to leave the house, I would rally my brood with gale-force Julie Andrews cheeriness. “Are we ready, chaps?” Futile. Utterly futile. Chaps, fellows, all consigned to the compendium of lost words. Now, even your columnist, Lady Picky of Pedantry, has succumbed to “guys”.

Telegraph readers will sympathise (not empathise, thank you very much) with the late Harold Pinter, who once ordered in a restaurant and his waiter said: “No problem!” The fearsome playwright replied: “I wasn’t anticipating a problem…”