According to kids, it's cool to be cool but manky to be bad. The Citizen put the theory to the test, and sent brill reporter David Higgerson and groovy photographer Kevin Walsh to Middleforth County Primary School in Penwortham to see what they thought . . .

SIX children, one room, one unhip reporter. It was time to be given a lesson in 21st century speak.

According to a survey for satellite children's channel Nickelodeon, cool is THE word to use if children like something.

And the 653 children polled claimed horrible was one of their favourite words to describe something they didn't like.

Without pulling any punches, 10-year-old Rebecca Ralph kicked off, saying: "Dudey is the word we use when something is good or we like it."

"Or wicked," added 10-year-old Vicky Hayton. Her statement met with a round of approving nods from her classmates. "But we don't use words like excellent, great and good. They are boring. And nice is naff. It isn't nice at all," mused Lizzie Reid, 10.

The eldest of the bunch, 11-year-old Joe Hiesley, added these wise words: "Funky is a word we use a lot."

According to the Nickelodeon survey, the majority of youngsters will use swear words to describe things they don't like.

After a prompt shake of heads, Daniel Dolan tried to set me straight. He said: "Gross, yak and iffy are all words we use if we don't like something."

And you have to pity the poor person who is called sad by this word-conscious lot. Rebecca added: "If you are sad, you are weird, a geekazoid in fact!"

Words like horrible, rubbish, disgusting, boring, stupid and manky all appeared inside Nickelodeon's top 10 of negative words, but Rebecca added: "We don't use manky. It's manky!"

But where do these words come from? The answer becomes very apparent when you mention what the 21st century youngster does in spare time.

Daniel added: "A lot of words come from telly. We all started saying groovy after watching Austin Powers."

"Eastenders, Corrie Orrie (Coronation Street) and Brookside are good for learning new words," added Lizzie, before dashing back to class to tell her friends about a photographer who thought Cowabunga was still hip . . .

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.