It's ages since I last saw him (BrE) & It's been ages since I last saw him (AmE)

I am willing to believe that the first is rare, and the second is common, in AmE.

centrox wrote:

I am willing to believe that the first is rare, and the second is common, in AmE.

This here sentence makes me think ya done seen one of the posts of mine that got deleted by some candyass admin, eh, centrox? That right?

centrox wrote:

I am willing to believe that the first is rare, and the second is common, in AmE.

This here sentence makes me think ya done seen one of the posts of mine that got deleted by some candyass admin, eh, centrox? That right?

It's the question contained in the original topic starter post.

To repeat, I said everyone I know includes "been" but I didn't know about Limeys.

Take It With Me

Phone's off the hook
No one knows where we are
It's a long time since I
Drank champagne
The ocean is blue
As blue as your eyes
I'm gonna take it with me
When I go

You can see "it's ages since" was the majority usage on both sides of the Atlantic until about 1980.

English language forums are full of Americans telling people that "it's a long time since" is "wrong" (because they've "never heard it" and/or "it doesn't make sense"), and Brits, Irish, Australians, Kiwis, South Africans, Indians, Nigerians, Kenyans, Hong Kong Chinese English speakers, etc, gently or not so gently, pointing out otherwise

Then British English started changing in ways American didn’t. The ‘proper’ English of the early 1600s would sound to us like a cross between the English spoken in Cornwall and Dallas; the accent has changed more in British English than in much of American.

"It's been ages since I last saw him" is mainly AmE?

Tom Waits, (born California, 1949) however, uses it:

globally - which is used more? BrE or AmE?

Anyhow, numbers, and/or "my local usage" don't determine what is "right" and "wrong".

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150715-why-isnt-american-a-language

As the linguist Max Weinreich said, a language is a dialect with an army and a navy; the US has been an independent country for more than two centuries – and boasts the world’s most powerful examples of both.

Americans felt most free – even obliged – to take linguistic liberties once they had taken their political liberty. As Noah Webster wrote in his 1791 Dissertations on the English Language, “As an independent nation, our honor requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as government.” Not that all Americans felt the same.

Throughout the 19th Century there was a great dictionary competition: between Webster’s deliberately American approach (his first full dictionary came out in 1818) and the much more British-orientated approach of Nathaniel Worcester (whose first dictionary was published in 1830).

Which won out in the end? Well, we know, don’t we? No one today has heard of Worcester’s dictionaries. The Americans opted for a distinctiveness to mark their independence.

. Webster promulgated many spelling reforms....Webster’s dictionaries were the prime vector include changing centre to center, defence to defense, connexion to connection, and chequer and masque to checker and mask. His removal of the k in words such as magick, musick, and logick even came to be the standard in England.

...While many Brits are quick to denounce Americanisms where they see them (even ones that, as we have seen, came from England first), quite a few words of American invention have been adopted into British English, including belittle, caucus, prairie, cloudburst, blizzard, cafeteria, cocktail, talented, reliable, and influential.

...While many Brits are quick to denounce Americanisms where they see them (even ones that, as we have seen, came from England first),.....

this ^^^ is why I particularly enjoy travelling in the Chesapeake and Delmarva

layman wrote:

...While many Brits are quick to denounce Americanisms where they see them (even ones that, as we have seen, came from England first),.....

Would you please give me some examples of Americanisms that "came from England first"?