I didn't think it was possible but I now have even greater admiration for Ben Folds.

At another great gig on Tuesday, he took a couple of minutes to explain the inspiration for The Ascent of Stan, a song about a hippy who abandons his principles in order to get on in the world.

The idea for the song came to him when he got a lift from said far-out groovy guy in a car adorned with peace stickers and witnessed a bout of near road rage from the driver.

Not that it had anything to so with the song, but at the end of the journey, the hippy told Ben he'd been "dialoguing" with his girlfriend.

At this point in telling the story, Mr Folds stopped to make a comment about people who use the word dialogue as a verb, a comment unsuitable for reproduction in a family environment such as this. Actually, that's not true. The truth is I can't remember exactly what he said because I was too busy screaming to process the precise words. Cheering grammar lessons at a rock concert - geek much?

Don't give me any BS about the evolution of language - although nouns like focus and parent have already been lost for ever, the further development of such practice is just plain wrong, and I'm damned if I'll give up any more ground.

But with all the dialoguing, incentivising, disincentivising, tasking, transitioning and actioning that goes on in popular speech there's little doubt that we're unlikely to win this war.

At least now I know that with Ben on our side, we're definitely going to have the better sounding argument.