Daily Mail, 2008
Can someone tell me exactly what is so funny about the F word, that Middle English verb, adjective or exclamation which used to refer solely to sexual intercourse but which is now used in a plethora of catch-all ways to indicate just about any kind of situation.
It obviously must be funny because television studio audiences howl with glee whenever it takes the place of a joke when uttered by a comedian, or when a star being interviewed on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross lets it slip.
And when no studio audience is to hand, as in location filming, TV producers, who clearly think it’s very funny, too, make sure we don’t miss the joy by kindly adding a roaring laughter soundtrack whenever it’s said, to tell us that we should be amused.
Perhaps audiences think it’s brave of comics to use a four letter word instead of making a joke. It isn’t. Not any more. No-one is going to reprimand them or ban them from the airwaves for being lazy rather than funny. And it’s a jolly sight easier.
But, so amusing do some TV people find the word, it often seems to be the only point in those bloomers and bleepers programmes, with those endless out-takes of actors forgetting their lines and saying “Fuck!” instead—which can then be unsubtly bleeped out.
I can see that this situation might be faintly amusing if an actress playing, say, Queen Victoria uttered the famous four letter word when she suddenly discovered that a pretend Buckingham Palace door was jammed shut just as she was about to make a grand exit. The incongruity of the situation would be worth a demi-smile.
But there’s nothing unexpected in seeing a girl from Eastenders in the Queen Vic so proclaim when she forgets what she is supposed to say next. It’s what many of us would expect her to say.
Actors often swear, as do many journalists, City workers, doctors, princes, factory workers, professors, soldiers, jockeys, nurses and farmers. Indeed all kinds and all classes of people, men and women, use words these days that their grandparents wouldn’t have done. That’s neither good nor bad, it’s just the way language evolves over generations.
Perhaps nuns don’t ever swear, but I wouldn’t be too sure. I once knew a Catholic priest who had a very salty tongue when it suited him.
What I’m certain the priest didn’t do, though, was to use that language in front of his mother, his parishioners, or children, or, indeed, in the presence of anyone whom he thought it might offend.
And there’s the difference. Using the word as a lazy, four lettered exclamation on television for a cheap laugh based on some dubious idea of its shock effect, is not the same as saying it in certain private situations among selected colleagues or age-mates.
The circumstances in which the F-word is used and who might hear, or overhear, it, changes its weight entirely.
When it comes to language, I’m no saint, but I don’t believe my children ever heard me use a four letter word until they were in their twenties, and even then, only rarely. I didn’t want them to grow up believing that that was an appropriate way to speak.
Naturally my mother never heard me say the F-word, either, and nor did any of my older relatives. It would have been offensive, even upsetting, to them and therefore quite wrong of me.
On television, however—although, curiously, not on radio—the most common four letter word is a part of many comics’ patois. I imagine the justification would go along the lines that it’s only a word, a pretty meaningless word of everyday usage that has lost much of its original sexual context. So, “What is there to get upset about?”
I’ll tell you. While it’s true, the original meaning of the F word may have largely disappeared,it still retains, for many, the ability to offend. In fact, although the comics and the producers of their shows may not care about this, I suspect the word is likely to offend as many millions of viewers as it is supposed to entertain.
Hearing it said on TV today might not generate the tumult it did when Kenneth Tynan purposely made himself notorious by suddenly saying it in a live debate in 1965, but it still grates upon the ears of many.
It might be “just a word like any other word”, as it is routinely excused, but to hear a couple of lads effing and blinding loudly on a bus nearly always brings looks of distaste from other passengers, who don’t wish to hear it, or for their children to hear it.
Such behaviour, is, if nothing else, bad manners. Actually I think it’s an unwitting kind of bullying of everyone else in earshot.
And whether we are among those who use it or those who hear it, it’s all about the balance of freedoms. Yes, we live in a free country, so we’re allowed to say anything we like in private. But, if what is being said loudly in public is repugnant to others, surely it is the equal right of those listening people not to hear those words—be it on the top deck of a bus or coming from a television.
And don’t tell me that it is no longer a powerful word. No-one who has lip-read it being snarled at a referee or an opposing player during a televised football match can be in any doubt as to its continued potency.
For me a comedian on popular television who speaks like a loudmouth on a bus or a football pitch is exhibiting not just a dearth of good material as he goes for the course laugh, he’s broadcasting his boorish bad manners.
Transmitting four letter words in a show of general evening entertainment without a thought or care as to who might hear them are an assault on all those who don’t want to hear them, or wish their children not to hear them.
I know the argument against that would be that if you don’t like what is being said in a show then change channel. But in many homes that can be just passing the buck to parents. Would you want to switch off a popular programme and warrant the wrath of your twelve year old children? Besides, the parents’ problem with the programme might well be not with the whole show, but just with the four letter words.
There is a place for four letter words in our lives and in our drama. I watched an excellent film recently called In Bruges in which a multiplication of expletives were used in an almost absurdly poetic way. But this was not general knockabout entertainment. It was an intentional exaggeration of the language for dramatic and comic effect, and you would have to go out of your way a little bit to see it. I doubt children would want to see it.
General comedy entertainment is different. It’s easy access. It’s all around us. I can understand why poor, struggling comics with a dearth of ideas fall back on the F word for quick laughs, hoping to shock. But what I don’t understand is why the clever ones do it, too—people like Ricky Gervais and Frank Skinner. They don’t need to. They really don’t.
Because they should know, a gag with “fuck” in it is rarely more funny than it would be without it.
