I repeated the question in as clear a tone as possible. Thankfully, this time the dawn of fresh wisdom lit up his face.

“Jargon?” he  echoed. Of course I know what jargon is - that’s what athletic Norfolk people  do before breakfast … they go a’jargon!”

A neat little riposte but it couldn’t undermine the serious nature of the argument I was anxious to get started.

What on earth is happening to our beautiful language? Just how much more gobbledegook, bureaucratese, doublespeak, jargon. “fantastic!” and “amazing!” doses of hyperbole  and other unadulterated rubbish must we endure?

"You mean all that squit coming over from America where aircraft don’t crash but have uncontrolled contact with the ground?"

That would do for starters , but we have to own up to several long-winded stinkers of our own.

Slums and ghettos have given way to inner-cities  and sub-standard housing. You know, where the fiscal under-achievers hang out.

I asked if he’d tried nutritional avoidance therapy but he said he had no need to lose weight after all that early-morning exercise.

As the debate over poor English demands urgent attention, the art of making 50 words do the job of two reaches epidemic levels it all seems designed to spread confusion, to drive a wedge between what is said or written and what is meant.

True, the Americans, particularly politicians, lead the way working overtime to take some of the nastiness out of reality by offering “energetic disassembly” for a nuclear power plant explosion.

Even so, we should try putting or own house in order before casting stones at others.

Like the White House who told us President Reagan wasn’t really unconscious when he underwent surgery – just in “ a non-decision-making form.”

Every trade and profession has its own jargon.

For example, lawyers, accountants and estate agents probably make some sort of sense while they’re chatting to like-minded colleagues, but how can they be expected to communicate with ordinary mortals?

Journalists and broadcasters are just as awkwardly placed. The BBC is riddled with initials and obsessed with sending round memos containing a few hundred of them at a time. They merely flummox those they are supposed to enlighten.

I recall halcyon days when bosses ventured into the sticks to applaud local radio stations and hold question-and-answer sessions laced with meaningful comments like “We hear what you say” and “We’ll, take that on board.”

I soon realised HOB stood for Head Of Broadcasting  but won few friends in high places for suggesting regular audiences with him or her could be construed as Hobnobbing.

Most radio presenters presume listeners know what they mean when they refer to prefade, sting, cart and segue.

Newspaper reporters often talk in abbreviations, losing themselves in intros, paras, mag cts and cncl mtgs.

Football commentators would be lost without physicality, momentum and finding their feet.

Managers wallow in a mixture of the amusingly banal and utterly pointless remarks about games of two halves and getting a result

During my young newspaper  reporting days I often bumped into local luminaries who preferred to call rat-catchers “rodent extermination operatives”.

No doubt they were also looking forward to the day when all toothbrushes would glory in the froth of “home plaque removal instrument.”

It’s still so easy to be pompous or pretentious.

I started covering football at grass-roots level just as custodians and pivots were disappearing from our pitches.

Council and committee meetings were often hard to follow but experienced colleagues found time to offer sound advice, such as converting “the proposed erection of off 24 superior dwellings” into plans for two dozen new homes”.

Keep it simple.

No point in thrusting a notebook under the nose of s celebrating centenarian and inquiring: “To what do you owe your remarkable longevity?” Or asking a farmer at Longham “How are your grain-consuming animal units, coming on, old partner?”

Perhaps life in general  has become more complicated in many ways since then and we’re getting the language, verbal or written, to suit it.

I tested that theory the other evening as I forced myself to watch television long enough, like, to realise just what is going on.

Basically, I was gutted, by a show in which every other word was a squawky “Wow!"

And any completed sentences began with a prolonged “So …. “.  

Know what I mean, you guys?

They were walking the walk like, presumably in pursuit of a level playing field, talking the talk and living the dream.

Then a worst-case scenario got worse when a politician came on board. He was well good at saying ”What we are saying is … “ and then saying nothing.

Then we were all urged to press red buttons, interact with total strangers and text madly deep into the night. I was shattered, for sure, before it was time for the news where you are.

I changed tack, went to bed and read a good book. Take my word for it. Redemption.

Decided I was going off jargon before breakfast.

Regular exercise will do me good.