WHAT word or phrase really gets your goat? (Let's hope it's not "gets your goat", of course, in which case, just substitute "rains on your parade" or "fails to float your boat", and we've got ourselves a "win-win situation"... unless that also gets your goat, of course. And how on earth can getting your goat have been such a bind in the first place?) There has been a bit of a kerfuffle in the national press recently over this very question, with hundreds of readers coming up with their pet hates.

These have included "ball park figure", "giving 110 per cent", "ramp up", "sorted", "innit" and "hit the ground running".

And there are loads more. My own bete-noirs include "telecon" (short for "telephone conversation"), the dreaded "big ask" and "same old same old".

"Cool" makes me shudder more than most, though.

It's a word that seemingly every person under the age of 21 uses instead of "Yes", "No", "Maybe", "I really have no idea", "I would indeed like a Flake with that" and thousands of other useful and perfectly legitimate everyday words and phrases.

But surely the most annoying saying of all time has to be the one you hear as you waste yet more of your precious life waiting for human contact in the maze that is the modern telephonic switchboard system. It's the phrase you get after you've gone through the list of options ("press button one for this, two for that, three for something else, four for none of the above") and even after "your call is in a queue... you are number... seven."

It's that annoyingly insincere voice saying: "Your call is important to us." Which makes me, and millions like me, yell at the receiver, "If it's really so important, then why don't you ruddy well answer it!"

Yes, we know it's a recording, and no one can hear us. But somehow it makes us feel better.

When presenters were presentable

HAVE you seen the state of of children's TV presenters these days?

Not only do they have spiky hair and little fluffy beards, but they wear ripped jeans and T-shirts and sport tattoos and piercings. And the blokes are no better.

Not like that in my day, of course. Back then they'd wear dinner jackets, collar and tie (or ballgowns for the ladies) and spoke only the Queen's English. They certainly didn't shout, like the rabble today (apart from John Noakes, of course, but that was usually because he was hanging from Nelson's Column, or standing knee-deep in elephant dung.) Why, we had proper presenters, like Susan Stranks and Jenny Hanley. All right, Magpie's Mick Robertson was deemed a bit of a rebel because he had long hair, but he was still boyish and enthusiastic as a playful puppy.

I was reminded of this by a new DVD I was sent to review, presented by the great Fred Dinenage, who, as those of a certain age will remember, was once a very fine children's TV presenter himself.

He didn't look a lot different back then either, with his Bobby Charlton hairdo and man at C&A outfits.

And who can forget Fred's sidekick on How! the great Jack Hargreaves? You don't get many pipe-smoking old blokes riding on a horse and cart and rhapsodising about the countryside on tea-time telly nowadays - more's the pity.