Or any number of curmudgeons, including our own minister for justice, who has yet to understand the limits of his own snarkiness, but snarky is the new bitchy. It scoffs at pretty much anything, but leaves plenty of room for a robust response.

Terry Wogan perfected the art during the Eurovision. Podge and Rodge, his dirty offspring, fake masturbate on camera and tell a dull, virtually mute and pompous interviewee, "You're getting on our tits!" Ah, yes. Snarks say what you think.

I first noticed this snarktastic behaviour on the TV about 10 years ago. It was a B movie being shown at around 2am. The continuity announcer was probably bored and didn't think anyone was listening, or was just in a bad mood. As the credits rolled, she sighed, "Well, that was crap." Back then, she could have lost her job. Today, in the age of MTV and E4, there's a race to be the snarkiest station on the TV. They're chasing cool. They don't want to be seen to be impressed by anything, just like snarky Jonathan Ross.

Snarky, a potent cocktail of sarcasm and cynicism, comes from snark/snork, to snore/snort, from the Dutch and Low German word snorken. Snark started coming into use in the UK in the early 1900s, but is now used in the US to describe comedians like Davids Spade and Letterman.

Bloggers are the ultimate snarks.

Take Badtux, the Snarky Penguin, a libertarian populist hacking operating systems in the south Pacific.

Crucially for snarks, in Badtux's innocent picture, he looks like krill wouldn't melt in his mouth.