Nerriere's idea caught on quickly within the international community. I wasn't the only one following its trajectory. The Times journalist Ben Macintyre described how, waiting for a flight from Delhi, he had overheard a conversation between a Spanish UN peacekeeper and an Indian soldier. "The Indian spoke no Spanish; the Spaniard spoke no Punjabi. Yet they understood one another easily. The language they spoke was a highly simplified form of English, without grammar or structure, but perfectly comprehensible, to them and to me. Only now," he concluded, "do I realise that they were speaking 'Globish', the newest and most widely spoken language in the world."

That, surely, is just a description of what used to be known as a lingua franca? Not according to Nerriere. For him, "Globish" was a specific linguistic tool, which he formulated in two (French language) handbooks: Decouvrez le Globish and Don't Speak English, Parlez Globish. In these self-published volumes, Nerriere began to develop a "Globish" vocabulary: the 1500 essential words for international communication, and the idiom-free turns of phrase in which they might be expressed by the world's two billion non-native English speakers.