Twenty years since the first text was sent - but what did it say?

On average we Midlanders do it fifty times a week and we are doing it three times as much as we did five years ago. We are talking about sending a text message.

And today the SMS, or short message service is celebrating a birthday. It is exactly twenty years since the very first one was sent.

If you're getting a new phone for Christmas, chances are it will run your life for you. Calls, messages, calendars, even mobile TV. The bricks of the 1980s were heavy on the arm muscles but light on uses with only the option of making a call.

Nokia introduced the 1011 on the 10th of the 11th 1992. It was the first mobile phone capable of sending and receiving SMS texts. Three weeks after engineers got the system live, so what did the first text message actually say? It was 'Merry Christmas' and it was sent by Neil Papworth.

Mr Papworth is now living in Canada but back then a 22-year-old engineer. The recipient of his text was the boss of Vodafone, at the office Christmas party.

According to Ofcom UK texters sent 150 billion messages last year - the most prolific users - youngsters aged 12-15 - sending an average of 193 each week.

Professor Ellis Cashmore, a lecturer in Culture and Media at Staffordshire University says whatever your age texting can be a convenient screen to hide behind.

But what about those coded messages? We took to the streets of Birmingham for your instant guide to teenage text speak.

These days the explosion in alternative forms of communication like Twitter and Facebook means that although we're texting more we're actually sending less SMS messages. Even so, twenty years from now we'll probably still be using the method that started it all.