@Arthur - I do apologise for mispelling your name there. And it's not as though e is anywhere near u on the keyboard, so I don't even have that excuse. Sorry.

@Brus - who said anything about teaching foreigners 'who was sat'. I'm a TEFL teacher, and of course I wouldn't do that, just as I don't teach them ultra formal expressions like 'He is taller than I', or 'Who did it - it was he', which some would have us believe is the correct form. What I teach as 'correct' is what the majority of educated speakers find acceptable, not rules set in stone. 'He was sat' is not at that stage yet, but may well become so. And I repeat, most if us don't use formal English very much.

@Arther - age has got nothing to do with it, I've got a good ten years on you, as has David Crystal, probably the greatest living expert on British English, and I don't imagine he gets particularly worked up about this. The difference between us is that I find nothing ugly in the expression, and if it becomes more accepted, it's fine by me. And that I differ with you as whether formal English is the only 'correct' English. Linguists ideas about what constitutes grammar is I think rather different to yours.

@Brus - that was a bit personal, wasn't it?

@Jackie - English English? Are you excluding the rest of us who share these isles. But I do agree with you about the exclamation mark.
@Frightful - Nice one. Out of interest, did you also add aitches to e's as in 'this 'ere hedge of the table'. I take it you know the Heineken ad - "The wa'er in Majorca don't taste like what it ought'a". I've just noticed there's an 'oi' in it with a noticeable aitch. 'Oi, Dell! Any danger of some refreshment in 'ere' - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4VFqbroi1I

@ Nick - I (also a Brit) totally agree, both on pronunciation and meaning. I just checked it in The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary and was rather surprised not to find it under hoy, thinking oi was more a dialect thing. And their definition is 'used to attract somebody's attention, especially in an angry way' - Like - 'Oi, you! What do you think you're doing?'.Not exactly a greeting. But on the other hand on the street or in the pub In you might well hear something like 'Oi mate, got a fag?' I suppose we could say that's a greeting of sorts. (for non-Brits, fag=cigarette)

@Brus - you've changed your tune slightly - now you're saying - 'But you cannot really get away in formal English with saying "I was sat" unless it is clear who sat you there'. No contest. It's not usually used in formal English, but in normal conversational English. And most of us hardly ever use formal English. And I see no need why TV sports commentators or chat show hosts, for example, should be expected to use formal English. If you check Google Books there are quite a few examples there. Not high literature I grant you, but edited published literature. And both Kingsley Amis and Ben Elton have used it in books.

I've been thinking about the use (admittedly formal) of 'seated' from the verb 'seat' as in expressions such as 'Please be seated.' and from the Catholic version of the Apostles' Creed - 'and [he] is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty'. These may have had their origins in the passive, but seemed to have lost their passive meaning. Oxford Dictionaries Online has an example of the PP being used as an adjective after an intransitive construction - 'upper boulders were simply seated in the interstices below'. Is the use of 'was sat' so very different from 'is seated'.

@Goofy - Are you by any chance Bradshaw of the Future?

Sorry, that should have read - All regular verbs whose base form ends in T or D sound the 'ed' syllable

@Ruthyphro - we are not actually discussing the past participle, we are discussing the past simple or preterite. But as a new verb (in the SMS meaning at least), and so regular, admittedly the preterite and the PP would be the same thing. And AnWulf's example in 'Let him be largely ***texted*** in your love', texted is not an adjective, this is a passive version of - May you largely text him in your love' or something similar.

@Kat - I completely agree with you. Texted has the advantage that it can't be confused with the noun or the base form of the word. I really can't see any problem with treating 'text' as you would any other regular verb, nor can I see any advantages in the alternatives being offered; they sound to much like text for me.

@crashdummy - it's only the last letter that matters, the X is neither here nor there. All English verbs that end in T or D sound the 'ed' syllable. Why should text be any different?

@Karyn - why should text be anything other than regular - verbs that don't change their form are are extremely rare - cost, cut, hit, let, put, and shut, although they do admittedly all end in T. But no verbs have been added to this list for centuries. New verbs are invariably regular.

@goofy - you've nearly convinced me, but both 'situated' and 'done' are listed in my dictionary as adjectives, but you can't say 'very situated' or 'very done', can you? And can't we use participles as adjectives without them having 'achieved adjective status'? We certainly do it with nouns. I was really trying to find a grammatical explanation as I don't go for the passive argument. I'd be interested to know what you think. Is this use in fact analysable? Or should we just put it down to being idiomatic.

@jayles - grow and shrink are both ergative verbs, where the object of the transitive verb can become the subject of an intransitive verb, but there aren't actually that many verbs that work like that -
http://random-idea-english.blogspot.com/2011/08/ergative-verbs-what-on-earth-are-they.html

Both sit and stand can be transitive, which is why some people see this usage as a misuse of the passive, although it's an argument I don't share.