The thing is, one in 10 words are, um, 'fillers'

Researchers have found that the British are the world's worst when it comes to umming and erring.

A study claims nearly 10 per cent of our speech is wasted on "filler" words - working out at more than five hours a year of "basically, um, er, actually, you know" total nonsense.

Analysis of more than 80 hours of conversations between 150 people found that we use meaningless words such as "um", and the footballers' favourite "at the end of the day" on avergage every nine seconds.

Phillip Hodson, speech expert and Fellow for the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, said: “Britain clearly loves to talk but many of us need to re-learn the art of conversation. Some say that fillers are a sign of intellect, used to consider what to say next. However, research shows that if your speech is full of padding, you’re harder to understand, which makes listeners tend to tune out.”