Talking Point
S Whether you’re a Sweary Mary or a Goodness me Glenda, we hope you’ll enjoy our look at the pros and cons of profanities wearing is having a moment… Honestly, it’s bl**ding everywhere. Wicked Little Letters has Oscar winner Olivia Colman in the middle of a potty-mouthed poison-pen mystery. Last year’s revelations at the UK Covid-19 Inquiry laid bare former government advisor Dominic Cummings’ effing and jeffing on WhatsApp. Even academics are busy with asterisks in new books on the topic, including philosopher Dr Rebecca Roache.
So could swearing be having a renaissance – and who’s on board? We asked two midlife women with opposing views to share their thoughts.
DID YOU KNOW?
✢In the medieval age, to be truly offensive, curses had to involve the holy, such as ‘God’s bones’.
✢The F-word’s origins are foggy, but could have been a gift from the Germanic tongue and a common word for sex by at least the 1300s.
✢TV and radio broadcasts worldwide are subject to strict – often bizarre – rules about swearing. When writing a 30-minute show for BBC Radio 4, UK comedy writer Richard O. Smith was restricted to ‘two s***s and a w***’, while ITV’s Celebrity Juice, one of the UK’s sweariest TV shows, was allowed ‘four motherf****rs but unlimited f**ks per 33-minute show’.
✢British comedy duo Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins found an ingenious way to use the broadcasting rules against swearing on air to protect the privacy of Great British Bake Off contestants. In an interview with The Guardian in 2013, Perkins explained, ‘If we see [a contestant] crying or something, Mel and I will go over there and put our coats over them or swear a lot because we know then that the film won’t be able to be used’.
TO SWEAR OR NOT TO SWEAR…
When the final series of Happy Valley opened with a heartfelt ‘Tw*t!’ as Sergeant Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire) stomped away from a patronising boss, I turned to my husband in triumph. ‘See! You say I use that word too much, but it’s my culture.’ The culture of wild West Yorkshire, that is. Our Catherine is the fabulously foul-mouthed creation of Sally Wainwright and if it’s good enough for Britain’s best TV writer, it’s good enough for me.
National treasure Dawn French is at it too, putting the T-word up in lights for her latest tour, Dawn French is a Huge Tw*t. In an unintentionally hilarious moment, the advertising watchdog was forced to rule after two people had a strop when they saw a press advert for the live show. It concluded, solemnly, that the title would be un
