DAVID Beckham sold the joys of text for a communications company - then was caught out in alleged phone infidelity. British Gas engineers and even politicians have been taught SMS messaging.

Texting has become so much a part of our culture that a summer course for teenagers in York will ask them to write short stories - on their phone.

If this tool had been available before, we might have enjoyed Samuel Beckett's "W8N fr God0"; Charles Dickens' "GR8 XpktAsns"; Agatha Christie's "Ms MRpl InvSTg8s" and all fairy stories would have begun "1NS UPn a time..."

Updated: 11:20 Friday, July 30, 2004