Whereas now we cannot even write the shortened version of Richard, in between Tom and Harry, or as the surname of the head of the Metropolitan Police, without our comments being put on hold, awaiting eternal approval. When I spelled the surname of the former health secretary Jeremy Hunt with a c, when it was pointed out that he thought lockdowns were a reslly good Chinese Communist import, and used an asterisk for the u, in order to get round the Mary Whitehouse algorithm, on Youtube, in a live chat, it was autocorwronged to Cannot. This sort of thing is the worst form of censorship and cancelling. It is pure racism against Anglo Saxons, stifling our rage and righteous anger, imposed by bedwetting lefty-liberal, corporate, globalist, arrogant swine.
Good article, though.
Prashant Kotak
3 years ago
Yeah, it’s gonna be pretty difficult for any comment that quotes the article, or gives counter arguments with examples, to survive the UnHerd automated censor. We have the ridiculous situation where the author cannot be repeated verbatim BTL… even if the author himself were to try and repeat his own quote. As the author himself might put it: not good enough.
Yep, just had a go at defending the allegedly indefensible word used at the end of this, citing a scene with Kurtan and Big Mandy from the excellent comedy series This Country, and it disappeared into the ether.
Not even marked ‘awaiting for approval’ any longer, sadly.
Thanks for that encouragement!
I have just tested the Censor’s nerve with that splendid first line of ‘Carmen XVI’, by Catullus.
Perhaps Martial or even William Dunbar might have stood a better chance of approval.
And as I can’t see your comment, I assume the censor has zapped it. Catullus would have stood no chance with the UnHerd censor, who seems to be channelling Mary Whitehouse, just as well he was around a couple of millennia ago and not today. Nor I suspect Rochester or Martial or Dunbar. I wonder if even Lawrence would be allowed.
No, sadly you are quite correct.
‘We’ are continually harangued that we live in the ‘most enlightened times ever’, yet everywhere we are assaulted by this nonsense.
I have yet to decided on the source of this malign influence, but I imagine it is the “usual suspects “.
Fred Dibnah
3 years ago
From Yes Minister we progressed? to the The Thick of it. Which will be remembered longer? I never watched Thick as the author names it but it sounds like it was writtten by a bunch of 6-7 year olds. I am being naughty, ooh. Arthur Smith once did a wonderful monologue on this.
I tell my children save your swear words. Then when used people will ask “Is everything alright?”
‘But I ask you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury: “cockwomble”, what does it mean?’
In defence of this m’lud, I can only refer the jury to the rather wonderful scene in the fantastic This Country where Kurtan uses the word as a term of abuse towards an elderly lady, only to find himself having to repeat it back to the magnificently scary Big Mandy in a grovelling apology…
Some of us are born swearers and some of us just aren’t.
My wife isn’t and I am
My oldest daughter, very proper and like her mum is, my youngest daughter, somewhat more like me, isn’t. Funny that.
I always say that I’m not a violent man, but I do swear a lot and like to think I judge ‘my audience’ when I do so.
Under duress it always helps, as has been scientifically proven…ahem, and sometimes, if not sprinkled too liberally, can make a something funny that much funnier but, even as a card carrying swearer, I accept it’s always a fine line.
I swear all the time, and in the workplace had to make a huge effort to curtail it. I’m retired now, and living in a village in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, Spain. The Spanish love swearing, everyone uses a wonderful range of expletives in everyday interactions. My 86 year old neighbour, Maria (there’s an unusual name in these parts) called the local police bloke a coño the other day, and they were just having a chat!
Henceforth BoJo will be known as, ‘the Cockwomble’.
Mark Melvin
3 years ago
It is curious how it is totally acceptable to use swear words but other once considered perfectly acceptable words are now banned. This said I found this article laugh out loud hilarious. Thanks. Marzipan d***o…. brilliant!
robert scheetz
3 years ago
Thick of It (rhymes with “sick of it”) were a good self-satire on the pop genre, were it a one-off. But, turns out the writers, as Ian Martin at some length points out, considered it interesting dialogue.
Actually, it’s just tedious, exhausting and, after all, market determined -targeting the vast and profligate adolescent sector.
Richard Pinch
3 years ago
I think the executive summary of this piece reads something like “I can use words you old fogeys don’t like and there’s nothing you can do about it ha ha ha”.
If Mr Martin really adheres to the notion that using words that upset other people is a vital part of comedy, or drama, or, well, anything, really, perhaps in his next diatribe he might demonstrate his courageous commitment to shock tactics by using some offensive words that could really lose him his social status, his income and his club memberships. I’m not going to list them here, but he knows what they are.
It has never been in any way taboo, as long as you’re the right colour. If you happen to be white, it’s a hanging offence to even think it, much less utter it. If you aren’t, it’s entirely permissible in conversation at the women’s guild tea party.
Why would we particularly want to? I’m always curious about the concentration on this word above all others as a freedom flag – many, many people, not all of them woke toddlers (I wrote ‘tossers’ but for once the gods of autocorrect made a helpful suggestion) find the word unpleasant, and suspect quite rightly that its use is usually deliberately offensive rather than refreshingly devil-may-care. Perhaps we could let the other side have this one? Oh and don’t start that tedious ‘First they came for the….’ chestnut, either.
Well, that was my point really. Mr Martin doesn’t mind being deliberately offensive to one group of people, by using one lot of “bad” words, because he knows he’s on perfectly safe ground. He does avoid being deliberately offensive to another group of people, by using another lot of “bad” words, because he knows that might lose him friends, social status or money. Nothing wrong with that at all, of course. What one might criticise, though, is the pretence that doing the safe thing is somehow ground-breaking, daring, edgy — or funny.
Jack Walker
3 years ago
The best article I’ve read for ages, I had a good belly laugh at parts of it.I hope Ian enjoyed writing it as much as I enjoyed reading it.
I don’t understand why so many are offended by swear words. They are just words like any others, a string of letters, nothing more. But using them is quite delicious, as is the reaction they get.
Nigel Clarke
3 years ago
“F***ity f***ity f*** f*** f***”
I have used this phrase since I first heard Malcolm Tucker use it, and I find it does have it’s place.
There was an episode of The Wire where two detectives looking for clues in a kitchen murder scene announce their findings and conclusions simply by using f*** in a variety of intonations, all of which made complete sense.
I first heard the phrase, or an extended variation of it, in 2005’s “The Matador” starring Pierce Brosnan.
Hope Davis’ character gleefully says the line when she realises the “friend” (Brosnan) of her hubby who’s visiting them out of the blue is actually an international hitman and not a boring old sales exec.
I believe the film was Brosnan’s first post-Bond, and it’s one of his best.
His Butterfly on a Wheel was really excellent too.
Just goes to show you, when it comes to Hollywood and pretty much anything else, nobody knows anything.
Paddy Taylor
3 years ago
Anyone who expects to hold back the tide of bad language, simply by wishing it so, will end up looking like a bit of a silly Cnut.
Last edited 3 years ago by Paddy Taylor
Charles Stanhope
3 years ago
“Pēdīcābo ego vōs et irrumābō”. *
* Translation forbidden.
James Wardle
3 years ago
Ian the author is enjoying this a lot! How can you not swear freely in an piece about profanity. I have always been a fan of our Anglo-Saxon 4 letter guttural profane words. Used sparingly and at the right time, see you next Tuesday is a showstopper as one never expected it to utter forth from this normally polite, mild mannered saintly.. actually that’s pushing it, but it never let me down.
I like splitting a word and inserting a well timed “effing” as in “abso-effing-lutely, mon petit chaufleur….”
Freedom of speech… we’re going to lose it if we are not careful as the slippery slide started some time ago. I mean people make bread with their own yeast from their own oven, but say that word and everyone literally has to shutt down like C-3PO resting his over heated circuitry.
Wonderful! He should be giving a creative swearing class to….
Last edited 3 years ago by Andrew Crisp
Marco Federighi
3 years ago
F***ing amateurs. Nobody can swear so imaginatively as a Tuscan – and we use blasphemy, too, freely and creatively. A certain American singer was dubbed as many times a w***e as there are rice grains in a railway freight waggon, multiplied by 100.(M****** vagone carico di riso e per ofni chicco cento volte maiala). Match that, coglioni.
Simon Cooper
3 years ago
This article pretty much confirmed that only teenagers and bad comedians think swearing is fun.
For everyone else it is a debasement of intellect.
Drahcir Nevarc
2 years ago
For pure filth, google “The Lady’s Dressing Room” by Jonathan Swift.
Whereas now we cannot even write the shortened version of Richard, in between Tom and Harry, or as the surname of the head of the Metropolitan Police, without our comments being put on hold, awaiting eternal approval. When I spelled the surname of the former health secretary Jeremy Hunt with a c, when it was pointed out that he thought lockdowns were a reslly good Chinese Communist import, and used an asterisk for the u, in order to get round the Mary Whitehouse algorithm, on Youtube, in a live chat, it was autocorwronged to Cannot. This sort of thing is the worst form of censorship and cancelling. It is pure racism against Anglo Saxons, stifling our rage and righteous anger, imposed by bedwetting lefty-liberal, corporate, globalist, arrogant swine.
Good article, though.
Yeah, it’s gonna be pretty difficult for any comment that quotes the article, or gives counter arguments with examples, to survive the UnHerd automated censor. We have the ridiculous situation where the author cannot be repeated verbatim BTL… even if the author himself were to try and repeat his own quote. As the author himself might put it: not good enough.
Ha ha. That was exactly my thought when I read the piece.
Great article, though.
Yes indeed, made me laugh out loud.
My favourite bit:
“Then loud rang his voice: f**k you Grendel – AND your mum!”
Ah the old Skalds would have been scalding!
Yep, just had a go at defending the allegedly indefensible word used at the end of this, citing a scene with Kurtan and Big Mandy from the excellent comedy series This Country, and it disappeared into the ether.
Not even marked ‘awaiting for approval’ any longer, sadly.
The ultimate punishment “Damnatio Memoriae”.
Thanks for that encouragement!
I have just tested the Censor’s nerve with that splendid first line of ‘Carmen XVI’, by Catullus.
Perhaps Martial or even William Dunbar might have stood a better chance of approval.
And as I can’t see your comment, I assume the censor has zapped it. Catullus would have stood no chance with the UnHerd censor, who seems to be channelling Mary Whitehouse, just as well he was around a couple of millennia ago and not today. Nor I suspect Rochester or Martial or Dunbar. I wonder if even Lawrence would be allowed.
No, sadly you are quite correct.
‘We’ are continually harangued that we live in the ‘most enlightened times ever’, yet everywhere we are assaulted by this nonsense.
I have yet to decided on the source of this malign influence, but I imagine it is the “usual suspects “.
From Yes Minister we progressed? to the The Thick of it. Which will be remembered longer? I never watched Thick as the author names it but it sounds like it was writtten by a bunch of 6-7 year olds. I am being naughty, ooh. Arthur Smith once did a wonderful monologue on this.
I tell my children save your swear words. Then when used people will ask “Is everything alright?”
I am always amazed at the talent some people have in enabling them to comment on a programme without having watched it.
Is Fred’s surname Whitehouse?
So “Thick” is unfunny but Arthur Smith is?
‘But I ask you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury: “cockwomble”, what does it mean?’
In defence of this m’lud, I can only refer the jury to the rather wonderful scene in the fantastic This Country where Kurtan uses the word as a term of abuse towards an elderly lady, only to find himself having to repeat it back to the magnificently scary Big Mandy in a grovelling apology…
https://youtu.be/tFh_IhFNKFM
As ever, context is everything.
Some of us are born swearers and some of us just aren’t.
My wife isn’t and I am
My oldest daughter, very proper and like her mum is, my youngest daughter, somewhat more like me, isn’t. Funny that.
I always say that I’m not a violent man, but I do swear a lot and like to think I judge ‘my audience’ when I do so.
Under duress it always helps, as has been scientifically proven…ahem, and sometimes, if not sprinkled too liberally, can make a something funny that much funnier but, even as a card carrying swearer, I accept it’s always a fine line.
Well put Sir.
I swear all the time, and in the workplace had to make a huge effort to curtail it. I’m retired now, and living in a village in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, Spain. The Spanish love swearing, everyone uses a wonderful range of expletives in everyday interactions. My 86 year old neighbour, Maria (there’s an unusual name in these parts) called the local police bloke a coño the other day, and they were just having a chat!
Whenever I see Boris I think, ” Cockwomble”
Henceforth BoJo will be known as, ‘the Cockwomble’.
It is curious how it is totally acceptable to use swear words but other once considered perfectly acceptable words are now banned. This said I found this article laugh out loud hilarious. Thanks. Marzipan d***o…. brilliant!
Thick of It (rhymes with “sick of it”) were a good self-satire on the pop genre, were it a one-off. But, turns out the writers, as Ian Martin at some length points out, considered it interesting dialogue.
Actually, it’s just tedious, exhausting and, after all, market determined -targeting the vast and profligate adolescent sector.
I think the executive summary of this piece reads something like “I can use words you old fogeys don’t like and there’s nothing you can do about it ha ha ha”.
If Mr Martin really adheres to the notion that using words that upset other people is a vital part of comedy, or drama, or, well, anything, really, perhaps in his next diatribe he might demonstrate his courageous commitment to shock tactics by using some offensive words that could really lose him his social status, his income and his club memberships. I’m not going to list them here, but he knows what they are.
Let’s bump into the proverbial elephant in the room. We have come to terms with the f-word and the c-word : when will we rehabilitate the n-word?
It has never been in any way taboo, as long as you’re the right colour. If you happen to be white, it’s a hanging offence to even think it, much less utter it. If you aren’t, it’s entirely permissible in conversation at the women’s guild tea party.
Why would we particularly want to? I’m always curious about the concentration on this word above all others as a freedom flag – many, many people, not all of them woke toddlers (I wrote ‘tossers’ but for once the gods of autocorrect made a helpful suggestion) find the word unpleasant, and suspect quite rightly that its use is usually deliberately offensive rather than refreshingly devil-may-care. Perhaps we could let the other side have this one? Oh and don’t start that tedious ‘First they came for the….’ chestnut, either.
Well, that was my point really. Mr Martin doesn’t mind being deliberately offensive to one group of people, by using one lot of “bad” words, because he knows he’s on perfectly safe ground. He does avoid being deliberately offensive to another group of people, by using another lot of “bad” words, because he knows that might lose him friends, social status or money. Nothing wrong with that at all, of course. What one might criticise, though, is the pretence that doing the safe thing is somehow ground-breaking, daring, edgy — or funny.
The best article I’ve read for ages, I had a good belly laugh at parts of it.I hope Ian enjoyed writing it as much as I enjoyed reading it.
I don’t understand why so many are offended by swear words. They are just words like any others, a string of letters, nothing more. But using them is quite delicious, as is the reaction they get.
“F***ity f***ity f*** f*** f***”
I have used this phrase since I first heard Malcolm Tucker use it, and I find it does have it’s place.
There was an episode of The Wire where two detectives looking for clues in a kitchen murder scene announce their findings and conclusions simply by using f*** in a variety of intonations, all of which made complete sense.
I first heard the phrase, or an extended variation of it, in 2005’s “The Matador” starring Pierce Brosnan.
Hope Davis’ character gleefully says the line when she realises the “friend” (Brosnan) of her hubby who’s visiting them out of the blue is actually an international hitman and not a boring old sales exec.
I believe the film was Brosnan’s first post-Bond, and it’s one of his best.
His Butterfly on a Wheel was really excellent too.
Just goes to show you, when it comes to Hollywood and pretty much anything else, nobody knows anything.
Anyone who expects to hold back the tide of bad language, simply by wishing it so, will end up looking like a bit of a silly Cnut.
“Pēdīcābo ego vōs et irrumābō”. *
* Translation forbidden.
Ian the author is enjoying this a lot! How can you not swear freely in an piece about profanity. I have always been a fan of our Anglo-Saxon 4 letter guttural profane words. Used sparingly and at the right time, see you next Tuesday is a showstopper as one never expected it to utter forth from this normally polite, mild mannered saintly.. actually that’s pushing it, but it never let me down.
I like splitting a word and inserting a well timed “effing” as in “abso-effing-lutely, mon petit chaufleur….”
Freedom of speech… we’re going to lose it if we are not careful as the slippery slide started some time ago. I mean people make bread with their own yeast from their own oven, but say that word and everyone literally has to shutt down like C-3PO resting his over heated circuitry.
SWEAR GLORIOUSLY!
“Used sparingly….”
That is the key idea.
Wonderful! He should be giving a creative swearing class to….
F***ing amateurs. Nobody can swear so imaginatively as a Tuscan – and we use blasphemy, too, freely and creatively. A certain American singer was dubbed as many times a w***e as there are rice grains in a railway freight waggon, multiplied by 100.(M****** vagone carico di riso e per ofni chicco cento volte maiala). Match that, coglioni.
This article pretty much confirmed that only teenagers and bad comedians think swearing is fun.
For everyone else it is a debasement of intellect.
For pure filth, google “The Lady’s Dressing Room” by Jonathan Swift.