I am going to speak in plain English in this sketch but, frankly, I can’t do much about the people I’m quoting. Thus it is with heavy irony that I report the welcoming words of Tony Wright, chairman of the Public Administration Select Committee, to his panel of plain language experts.

“Welcome stakeholders,” he cried. “We look forward to rolling out our dialogue on a level playing field so that going forward in a public domain we have a win-win step change.”

This brought giggles. “He’s thinking outside the box,” cried David Crystal, one of the four experts lined up before the committee like words in a very short sentence.

“Ten pounds in the swearbox,” chirped Marie Clair, the woman from the Plain English Campaign. Sadly, I must report that there was nothing plain about these four. First there was the bizarre fact that Professor Crystal and Ms Clair (who is not related to the magazine in any way) were next to each other and so, as a duo, they were almost crystal clear. Plus there was Matthew Parris, from this parish, and Simon Hoggart, sketchwriter from The Guardian.

As a group they seemed deeply exotic, especially the professor, who has loads of white hair (on head and face) and thick black glasses.

Mr Wright began with a deep question. “Does any of this drivel matter?”

Professor Crystal took this and wrestled with it like an alligator. “One has to ask, what is political language for?” he announced, and then did just that for what seemed like forever.

Finally, he came up for air and Mr Wright interrupted: “But does it matter?” And he was off again. Ms Clair said it did if people couldn’t understand. Mr Parris said it did but that most people quickly saw through the gobbledegook.

Mr Wright noted that obscure language in politics was not a new development and quoted George Orwell from 1946: “One ought to recognise that the present political chaos is connected to the decay of language and that one could bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.”

So, said Mr Wright, blinking like an owl, was it that serious now? Professor Crystal instantly knew the answer. “If you asked Orwell how exactly are you proposing to do this, then actually you got an awful lot of waffle by way of reply.” Indeed, he said, one of Orwell’s ideas was to use only active verbs. “But when you analyse Orwell’s language you find he uses passive all the time."

The Labour MP Kelvin Hopkins noted that when he was at school and wrote nonsense, his teacher would write “Nonsense” on his paper. Another MP turned to poetry and the power of the haiku.

One idea was to keep politicians’ speeches to one minute each. This caused Tory MP Charles Walker almost to explode. Then he fastened on the vogue among politicians for Twitter. “This diminishes politics even more. Life is more serious than, ‘I am sitting in a restaurant and John Prescott has walked past’.”

The experts blinked. Was life more serious than that? Mr Wright now trilled: “You could get rid of PMQs and you could have Twitter Time.”

Hmmm. Well, actually, I think I might have just sat through exactly that.

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