And though it might be hard to imagine a colleague laughing that their pot plant could give a better presentation than you, it turns out that, in fact, this kind of office chat is relatively normal.

The latest evidence suggests that these verbal contests have been creeping into the workplace – and they’re far more prevalent than you would expect. Last year Jeremy Yip, an expert in management from Georgetown University, along with researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, decided to find out exactly how prevalent trash talk is among the employees of Fortune 500 companies. They surveyed 143 people about their experiences, and found that 61% could remember instances of trash talk that had occurred within the last three months.

“It’s quite prevalent and quite frequent,” he says. “It’s shocking really.” So how is all this gutter talk affecting people? And should we all be honing our best put-downs?

Unlikely motivator

But first – what actually is trash talk? The researchers defined it as “boastful remarks about the self or insulting remarks about an opponent”. Yip’s favourite example of the latter occurred in 1999, when London was preparing to celebrate the new millennium.

This included the construction of a giant Ferris wheel, the now-iconic “London Eye”, which was sponsored by British Airways. Alas, in the final stages, it became clear that it wasn’t going to be ready on time. Naturally this delighted Richard Branson, the billionaire founder of their rival, Virgin Atlantic, and he arranged for a blimp to fly over the half-finished attraction with a banner that read “BA can’t get it up!”