For my German GCSE oral exam my teacher Mr Cook, knowing I was struggling, taught me the highest-scoring all-purpose sentence he could. You got an extra point for using a question, a past-tense, a conditional, an idiomatic phrase and also for being grammatically correct over all.

It was like catching the mushroom in Mario: for a brief moment I was invincible. Despite blundering along in the wrong tense and person with vast gaps in my vocabulary so that my trousers were “a shirt for my legs” and so on, every once in a while I could throw this one thing in.

The first time I did it the examiners eyes really lit-up. Like “woah this kid has found his feet - this is going to be great.” The second time his eyes narrowed as he realized it was a trick. But he couldn’t fight it.

I think we were allowed to get full points for it twice and then provided it was correct to throw it in we did then get further points for correct usage. Anyway I just kept throwing it out there in response to everything he said. And there was nothing he could do.

Did anyone else get taught a magic GCSE oral phrase? I still use it on every conversation with a German speaker I ever have. I’m fact, it’s pretty much the only phrase I use.

And the phrase was......

“Wer hätte das gedacht?”

I use it all the time. On lazy days I use it in English too. It keeps a conversation going very nicely while I switch off. I have often thought I could easily get through an entire day saying nothing but “who would have thought it?” in different tones.