The Bonfire of the Profanities

I remember the first time I ever heard a swearword. I was in the cloakroom at Ascot Heath Infant School and a fellow pupil called Charles Littleworth said “Dogshit!” for absolutely no reason whatsoever. I had no idea what the word meant, but is sounded brilliant, so I immediately went home and called my sister a ‘shit pig’, which resulted in me being slapped by my mother and sent to bed without any tea.

It must be a dreadful moment for parents when that happens. Your angelic, innocent offspring, in whose mouth butter wouldn’t melt, suddenly comes home one day and calls you a piss-stained shit-chuffing squirrel fister. But what can you do about it? Fuck all. Swearing has become so commonplace these days that it has very little meaning. Words that used to bring gasps of outrage barely raise an eyebrow and for some clans, the f-word acts more like a punctuation mark. Muthafucka. I find this slightly irritating because it’s very difficult to express anger anymore without raising your voice. I long for the days when you could say “I’m a bit bloody annoyed about this!” and all the women within 10 feet would pass out.

I did meet an exception to this the other day. I was at my parents house having a perfectly civilised dinner, when my mother used the word “bollocks”, causing me to inhale a roast potato. I was so shocked that I’ve forgotten the context it was in, but it did make me realise that there is one last taboo in the world of blue language – hearing your parents swear. And as for your grandmother, well, that’s simply unthinkable. I realise this isn’t the case for everyone, but I was brought up in a family where swearing was strictly forbidden, so to hear such a word coming from my mother was quite unexpected. It pleased me that I can still be shocked by bad language, otherwise what's it there for? As Mark Twain said: "in certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer." Lets try and keep it that way.