'What winds me up the most about our national life in general is the fashion for imprecise and redundant speech. I inherit this deep-seated misosaskopeslexis* from my father, who was disdainful of the transatlantic accent we all affected in the 1960s and 1970s, and the now forgotten vocabulary that went with it (hey, wow man, cool, far out, heavy, groovy etc). Like him, I had a classical humanist education in which I was carefully taught how to construct sentences, and how to link them into a coherent train of thought. Nowadays, of course, everyone is affecting a generic Thames corridor accent that is pure Essex. Glottal stops are thriving like Himalayan balsam on the banks of a beck. It is part of the continuing tragedy of our loss of regional dialect. Oi’m a proper vexed bout thaht, bor. Oi’d a rather be a hearin good ol Mardle, speakin pussnally*. The imperialism of Essex doesn’t quite drive me bonkers, however. What gets my goat is the fashion for larding one’s speech with delays and interpolations that are designed to make one think that the speaker is cool, relaxed, on trend and modest. I once went to speak to a sixth-form group where one perfectly intelligent young woman said “like” so much that it took her five minutes to say something that should have taken five seconds. The effect was embarrassing and bewildering. Afterwards, in private, I begged her to stop doing it.' Louis de Bernières