Andrew Billen
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That erudite and precisely spoken quizmaster Robert Robinson used to tell a story about Kenneth Tynan, the first man to use the f-word on British television. A rather grand elderly woman approached him at a party a few weeks after the incident. Tynan feared the worse, but she wanted to thank him. She had, she said, never heard the word before: “But now I use it all the time.”
Forty years on, everybody does, even on television. Anyone who watches Wife Swap will have long since concluded that variations of “f***” are now the only intensifiers in town. Indeed some people seem to swear more on screen than off. I have never met Gordon Ramsay, but those who have say he rarely swears in private. One of his programmes is called The F Word. Despite the hilarious ambiguity that F may stand for food, his catchphrase is “f***”. In Australia, however, Ramsay's language has sent a bee under the cassock of the Archbishop of Adelaide. Noting that on one show Ramsay used the F-word 80 times, the Most Rev Philip Wilson told a parliamentary inquiry into swearing on television that the episode should never have been aired. The cleric is fighting a rearguard action here, and a rearguard action on two fronts.
The first is a quixotic tilt at the plain fact that swearing, once indulged in mainly by the lower and the upper classes and some intellectuals, is now the lingua franca of the bourgeoisie. What my father called my mother's “kitchen language” is now out in the drawing room. You might say that Australians are fine ones to talk. But the Archbishop is from Adelaide, not for nothing known as the city of churches.
His second battle is to preserve television as a sanctuary inside which people behave better than they do outside. In its early years, television, certainly, was a more formal arena than your average bar. Tynan, when he made history, was discussing censorship. He used the word academically: “I doubt if there are very many rational people in this world to whom the word ‘f***' is particularly diabolical or revolting or totally forbidden.” Although the BBC apologised, few rational people would today condemn his usage in that context.
The BBC Producers' Guidelines accept that strong language remains “a subject of deep concern to many people” (The Times agrees, hence all my asterisks) but adds that “in the right context strong language may cause little offence and in some situations may be wholly justified in the interests of authenticity.” The question is what those situations are.
A presenter on a live programme who swears at a technical cock-up, not realising that his microphone was on, would surely be keep his job. Similarly, perhaps, we can excuse drunks, such as the artist Tracey Emin who in 1998 turned up intoxicated for a television discussion of the Turner Prize and said the f-word several times, even while admitting that her mum would be embarrassed.
“Artistic reasons” can sound like a cop-out for lazy writing out to shock, but you can never safely dismiss them either. In both Jerry Springer: The Opera and the political satire, The Thick of It, for example, the obscene language is so baroquely layered it becomes poetic. It does on The Sopranos, too, although here the language has verisimilitude on its side. How would you expect uneducated gangsters to make themselves understood?
No, the real problem with the Ramsayan over-use of those great taboo twins that begin with F and C, is not that they cause too much outrage but too little. We have lost two powerful invectives. When Johnny Rotten said “f***” on teatime TV in 1976, the programme's presenter was suspended for two weeks; in 2004, Johnny, now trading under the name Johnny Lydon, used the C-word on I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! and fewer than 100 viewers out of an audience of 11 million complained. The “worst” words in the language now make programme titles. In 2004 Channel 4 broadcast a documentary about an aristocratic family The F***ing Fulfords. More recently BBC Three transmitted F*** Off I'm Fat and F*** Off I'm A Hairy Woman, not to mention last year's The C-Word: How we came to swear by it.
Alas, the C-word. For a while it looked as if c*** would retain its force by offending the fuddy-duddy and the feminist. Yet Ramsay casually includes it. The Archbishop's cause is a lost one. Television is no longer a citadel; it's not even my mother's kitchen. It is Gordon Ramsay's.
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I am living in Texas at the moment and the only TV I watch is when Gordon is on and he is the only person (as far as I am concerned) who can say the f word and get away with it. I make allowances for him because he is so lovely to his wife and children and really knows his business in the kitchen.
Claire Elizabeth, Houston, USA
Most "four letter words" are Anglo Saxon and were not originally expletives but proper everyday words. If they returned to common usage there would no longer be any concept of swearing or offensive language - unless of course you are one of those people who take offence at anything on principle.
Chris Webb, London, UK
I can't see anything wrong with Gordon. You know what he is going to say, so if you don't like it. DON'T WATCH IT. The man is very passionate and like to get things right.
Sal, Basinhstoke,
People like Jonathan Ross use it as though it's 'cheeky' and as if he's said something clever. The problem is that it makes it commonplace and acceptable - which it should not be.
American films are the worst offenders, Some that are shown on T.V. are just continuous swearing - no other script.
G.Wms., Rhondda, Wales
The only reason Gordon swears is because he is so passionate about what he does. I swear all the time when writing if my brain goes to mush.
I mean yes it does annoy when overused, in an abusive manner but that's just the way we are.
Anyway, if Gordon didn't swear we'd have nothing to moan about.
Seetal Udeshi, London, UK,
I performed in the Vagina Monologues, in which one monologue deals exclusively with the C-word. I still don't like it, mostly because it implies such vitriol. Too much use of the F-word is just unimaginative, nothing else.
Sarah, Ottawa, ON, Canada
In addition to Gordon Ramsay, in the U.S. we have a show on the Bravo (cable) network called "Top Chef" which also has to do a lot of bleeping. It gets boring. How about expanding your vocabulary for a change?
swissmiss, Wash., D.C., USA
Well, call me old-fashioned, but I object to a torrent of foul language coming from the TV. It's hard enough bringing up teenagers without them seeing 'celebrities' apparently using most unseemly language with impunity. Ramsey should let his cooking do the talking: it can be offensive but silent.
Chris Palmer, Southampton, England
A lot more offensive things be said in "good wholesome English" than the simple use of swear words. You can insult vilely without swearing. You can hurt, mislead, defraud - without swearing. Does swearing really matter that much? Or should the focus be on manners?
Steve, Cumbria,
Actually no, some of us out here are still shocked when we hear foul language, on TV or when you are out and about . I just equate the amount of swearing from a person to their lack of grey matter .
SO, Oxfordshire,
The ubiquity of the F-word does not mean that it's acceptable language.
It seems to me that many people today do not recognise when it might be better to forego the bad language and utilise a less offensive word. Granted, for many of our population this would stretch their intellect too far.
Chris Palmer, Southampton, England
Andrew Billen writes as if he were preaching to the converted, purely in the context of the modern UK. What he must begin to realise is that English is now the accepted international language and that students of English as a Foreign Language regularly log on to UK websites to develop their skills.
Edmund Burke, Kingston upon Thames, England
Could the morons who lack the vocabulary to express themselves without peppering their speech with random fs and cs at least try to use them correctly? Of course not, they don't have the wit. Its ugly and unnecessary and I'm fed with being subjected to it every time I leave the house.
Fred, London, Uk
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