Emma is quite right. Many youngsters these days do sound stupid. We had our own words when we were young..I think every generation does, but we never sounded downright dumb.

There is a difference in what is happening these days..You can go down the road of believing that it's being done on purpose, to dumb whole generations down, making intelligence something *not* to be achieved, at any rate..or you can decide it's the media that surrounds young people these days, with of course, the texting added to it, which is changing the language.

For Emma to voice her concerns does not make her a snob, a bitch or anything else. She is merely a mother, with a young son, I believe, who is probably surrounded by youngsters all talking in exactly the same way, innit, like, know what I mean, like, yeah, like, you know, like?

I had a friend's daughter who went through this phase, not sure she's out of it yet, and it almost drove me bats to listen to...I felt like saying "For goodness sake, speak the language as you used to! Don't be 'like everybody else' and sound as thick as a brick!", but I took a deep breath and kept quiet.

It's a secondary school thing in the main, I think, innit? I mean, like, everyone talks the same there, like, thinks the same too, like, and well, they're all good, like and that's what they do, like, innit?

Bloody irritating, like, though, innit, like?

And ******that****** is what Emma was talking about...like.

She's a wonderful actress, as is her Mum....and her husband, Greg Wise, is pretty cool too, like.

Here she is on the brilliant QI with her dear friend, Stephen Fry, whom she's known since Uni days at Cambridge, where Emma, Stephen, Hugh Laurie, Rowan Atkinson and a few more of our most intelligent witty and funny entertainers belonged to The Cambridge Footlights....and something tells me that Emma will be making all of you chuckle like crazy in when you watch this.. :0)

Enjoy...like.

Emma Thompson with her good friend, Stephen Fry