LOL @ this Telegraph article written a couple of days ago:

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/10/12/do1203.xml

So what is your problem, then, Rushdie?

'Be your age" was once a popular remark, aimed at people who made cretinous comments that might appropriately have come from younger, less experienced persons.

That sort of thing is all over: today, our problems are with mature persons whose desire to be thought "with it" causes them to pick up youth-speak, most of it borrowed from American teenagers, delivered with an "aren't I up-to-date?" smirk.

principally attention-seeking, a trick often played by those who have been out of the news for a while: well-known actors passed over for desirable roles, authors un-shortlisted for literary awards, politicians overlooked yet again when ministerial changes are announced.

"Wicked" is a word that used to mean sinful, un-Godly, spiteful. Today it means, if it means anything at all, "That's great! Go on, I am listening with interest." These days, if a priest tells a young couple that sex before marriage is wicked, the couple is likely to reply "and it's pretty wicked after marriage, too".

I remember Richard Burton on an American talk-show being quizzed about the fact that Welsh was his first language, English his second and being asked whether there were any other languages he spoke. He said: "No, except for three unrepeatable words of Hungarian." He was asked what they were, said he couldn't utter them, was begged to do so and finally relented. "Zsa Zsa Gabor," he said.

I have a couple of Indian words that fall into that category, and with hardly any persuasion required will name them: Salman Rushdie.

If you write as beautifully as the author of Midnight's Children does, you should, in my opinion, keep your gob shut on radio rather than comment on Jack Straw's reluctance to talk to women wearing veils that hide all but their eyes. On this subject, with pertinent argument to be made for both sides, Rushdie said: "Veils suck."

The word "suck" probably owes its popularity to the fact that it is an accepted four-letter word ending with the letters "uck". But, even according to this strange usage, veils don't suck: bad plays, excruciating opera – and, in this instance, Salman Rushdie – suck.

Let us move smoothly to the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, a man called John Bolton, the sort of person who largely escapes notice until you get to read his very long obituary.

The subject is North Korea's nuclear weaponry. In reply to questions regarding the effect a bomb would have on political stability in Asia, His Excellency (as it is proper to call him) said: "Get a life." Presumably, he felt that this was a really cool – which today means hot – thing to say, something bound to appeal to young people, to persuade them that he is a groovy dude.

Speechwriters used to be employed to put together memorable and pithy phrases intended to enhance the reputation of eminent folk too occupied running the world to think up their own verbiage. Think of Ronald Millar's "The lady's not for turning", for which Margaret Thatcher rewarded him with a knighthood.

And now even BBC interviewers have caught on to this irritating new way of speaking. Sarah Montague, quizzing Lady Warnock on education not long ago, desperately attempted to show she was moving with the times.

"What is your problem?" she asked, and I sat there hoping against hope that the great lady (for Baroness Warnock is a very great lady) would tell her to "Get a life" – or, perhaps, that her question sucked.