In the factory where my grandfather worked for decades, there was one item more important than any piece of machinery or safety apparatus: the swear jar. Whenever someone uttered a curse word, he was bound to pay sixpence into it and, at the end of the month, the coins were collected and used to buy tea and biscuits for elevenses. My grandfather had been at the factory eight years before someone worked out that he was getting his tea and biscuits for free: he never paid a single sixpence into the swear jar because he simply never swore.
He didn’t swear during conversation. He didn’t swear if he had a disagreement with a co-worker. And he didn’t even swear when a semi-melted splinter of copper shot out of a malfunctioning machine and into his eyeball. (When I asked him why, he said, ‘Because I couldn’t see how foul language would get it out.’) Once my grandfather’s restraint was exposed, his fellow workers decided that, uniquely among them, he would be required to pay two shillings a month into the swear jar, whether he swore or not.
When I was a child, this was held up as an example to which I should aspire. Despite my school days involving an odd sequel this story, when members of my form put together a pot of money I would be given if I said the F word (I didn’t), Granddad’s is certainly not a standard of decorum I have kept. Nor is it a standard to which I think others should always conform. But it is a standard I expect to operate during pre-watershed television, the language in which has become increasingly crude.
A couple of months ago on afternoon nonsense Deal or No Deal, Noel Edmonds told a joke about a sex doll with the punchline, ‘I bit her on the bum: she farted and flew out the window!’ Similarly, Jeff Spelling recently introduced an episode of the even cuddlier Countdown with a faux-anecdote about a tongue piercing that caused him to feel a bit of a ‘prick’. When I caught a snippet of Country House Rescue at around 11am the other week, I also caught an earful of its presenter, Ruth Watson, telling a pair of inept estate-owners dithering about a business plan that they had been sitting on the pot for too long, and it was ‘time to start pissing’.
That these examples all come from Channel 4 is not intended as a specific indictment of it: pre-watershed swearing seems to be endemic across all the major channels. Anyone who watches The Boat Race or Wimbledon endures frequent bursts of expletives, because of the modern sports coverage convention of putting microphones everywhere they can possibly be put, regardless of whether a straining athlete is likely to turn the air around them a dark shade of blue.
But at least we delicate-eared viewers might expect an exhausted oarsman or exasperated tennis player to let out the odd naughty word. It is the unexpected swearing that offends us most. In a recent episode of Simon King’s Shetland Diaries, the presenter repeatedly complained of being ‘shat on’ by birds. Of all the instances of bad language cited here, it is this that irritated me most – because it was the least appropriate. (An early evening BBC programme about bird watching is one towards which I would happily guide my young niece and nephew.)
And appropriateness is the key. ‘Appropriate’ is one of the most maligned words in our language. Or rather, it is those who use it who are maligned. Say something is inappropriate and you are immediately thought to be saying, ‘I have a very rigid set of spoilsport sensibilities and believe everyone should act according to them.’ But the suggestion that a programme’s language be appropriate is not the suggestion that it be dull, neutered or unchallenging: it is the assertion that the content of a show should be fitting for its subject and audience.
Were I to turn on an episode of The Sopranos in which there was no crude language, I would think there was something very wrong with that episode of The Sopranos. When I turn on an episode of Countdown in which there is crude language, I think there is something very wrong with that episode of Countdown. A mid-afternoon quiz show aimed the elderly gains nothing by showcasing coarseness, but loses a great deal.
Of course, there are many who don’t think swearing matters at all. Words are merely words, they say: they cannot be ‘good’ or ‘bad’. And, besides, swear words ultimately don’t mean anything. It’s silly to be offended by a word.
But if swear words ultimately do not mean anything, then words ultimately do not mean anything – and it is that idea that allows causal hate speech, political double-talk and the worst excesses of advertising. In any context, words matter and words have meaning. And, in some contexts, swears words do nothing but demean.
Like anyone who admits to being offended by bad language, I feel compelled to point out that I’m not a hysterical prude. I don’t even believe that every pre-watershed swear word warrants censure. When Caprice said The Worst of All Words on This Morning, it is said that no-one complained. To some, this is saddening evidence that television audiences are now so accustomed to crudeness they’re not even offended by a 10am C word. To me, it is gladdening evidence that most audiences are made up of intelligent and clear-thinking people.
Had ITV scripted a segment for This Morning in which the un-sayable syllable was said, or had one of the programme’s presenters exclaimed it during the course of their usual off-the-cuffery, there would, quite correctly, have been a flood of complaints. But what happened was that a guest on a live television programme became caught in the flow of conversation, and cited the name of the segment in a play that happened to include the very rudest of rude words. She looked immediately mortified, as did the presenters, who sensibly decided to move on without making a silly fuss. The audience admirably took the same course.
I also do not, as people who hold my attitude about swearing on TV are supposed to, think that the country’s going to the dogs or that most television shows are pernicious and repugnant. But I do think that an unpleasant roughness is appearing in many programmes in which it does not belong – and I feel, strongly, that it ought to be eradicated because those programmes would, quite simply, be better without it.
Perhaps I am out of touch. And, even if I’m not, perhaps it’s too late to arrest the decline in daytime decency, and I should accept that by the time any children of mine are born, the programmes aimed at them will see Handy Manny effing and blinding at Iggle Piggle.
As my grandmother said when she learned I was writing this piece, ‘Well … I suppose anything goes since Prince Harry said “arse” on the evening news.’
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