Brian Clough, the legendary Nottingham Forest and Derby County manager, was a man of the people.
Clough became a household name as a TV personality back in the 1970s and was loved by football lovers and football haters alike for his reputation as a straight-talker.
Speaking more recently about the number of French players in the Arsenal team before his death in 2004, he said: “I bet their dressing room will smell of garlic rather than liniment over the next few months.”
He wasn’t someone who got bogged down with panic over political correctness and, instead, told it how he saw it with a refreshing straightforwardness.
Nowadays that is a mantra which seems plain fanciful in a society which has become suffocated by government diktat and institutional speech codes.
Indeed, our very own University has published guidelines to staff which recommend they avoid phrases such as “manpower”, “workmanlike”, “taxman”, “headmaster or headmistress”, and “epileptic”.
Such sensitivity just isn’t necessary. Surely the art of communication is in sound shape as long as we understand each other?
The broadcast media, in particular, are now petrified of offending anyone in the wake of the already infamous Sachs-gate row.
We find ourselves treading on eggshells more than ever, constantly battling to avoid a “David Brent moment”.
We end up squabbling over “offensive” terms such as “brainstorm”, “nitty gritty” and “black coffee” for the benefit of the very few.
And as a result, reams of manufactured terminology are slowly but surely embraced to the point where we’re addressing each other like we’re sat cross-legged in the House of Commons singing ‘Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep’.
It seems that watching BBC’s Question Time is no longer the only place to be bombarded with jargon-infused pontificating as the art of bullshitting stretches beyond our screens and our airwaves and into the workplace.
Now, my only experience of office-speak comes courtesy of The Apprentice, where the candidates repeatedly promise Sir Alan “at the end of the day, I will give 110 per cent” in a futile bid to save themselves from the sack.
But a recent poll of office workers confirms long-winded language is inherent and, before long, employees are “pre-preparing” reports and “forward planning” meetings until they are “taking a holistic approach”.
Let’s bring back plain-speaking and get rid of all this cobblers.