I was like, oh my God...

...is the single most annoying phrase to have infected the English language since every TV drama produced in the UK replaced 'joking' with 'kidding'. Who the hell ever says kidding in real life?

But a much more worrying trend has emerged, and most of us haven't even noticed it.

Every single person I know recalls at least one anecdote from a conversation they have had on any given day. "He said this..." "She said that..." was the norm. Somewhere in the 90s we started saying "And he goes 'I don't think so'..." "She went 'yes please, I love them'...". I got told off for saying 'goes' and 'went' because they are verbs used to denote physical movement, not speech.

Now, out of nowhere, everyone under the age of 30 has started saying "He was like, 'no way, I hate it there'...", often with an "oh my God" surgically attached. I too have succumbed to the 'like' infestation, albeit subconsciously, because it has taken over the world and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

Why Why Why? American TV, probably.

Today's image is a photographic metaphor. I am the girl (obviously not the metaphor, ahem) and everyone else is the I-was-like brigade. They are making me feel unwell, like I have, like, a headache or something.