Did you know that there are people out there whose job is to monitor patterns of swearing? I mean WTF? How is that a job? It’s like being paid to count how many times the word ‘the’ comes up in 22,647 conversations. Who fucking cares? Yet of course, that’s rhetorical. Everyone cares about our language to some degree or other. Whether its wincing when a BBC newsreader repeatedly drops their Hs or when one hears one too many glottal stops in the sentence ‘I gotta getta new battery for my little kettle’, and you know the speaker must be a footballer, we like our language. And some of us like swearing.

So here’s the new league table.

‘Bloody’, the reigning UK champion at the last count, 20 years ago, has slumped. Michael Caine (no relation to Harry) brought it to new heights in the Italian Job with his ‘blow the bloody doors off!!’ but its now plummeted. At its peak it was used 650 times out of every million words, now down to a mere 120. Overtaken by… no fucking surprise, ‘the F-word’. Used 550 times per million words. As a simple comparison, my own personal best was after getting through to Barclays Bank after 3 hours of delays, 97 forgotten passwords, 14 key-pad ‘menus’ and eventually only being answered by an educationally challenged non-English speaker. I reached the phenomenal 995 f-words in each 1000 words.

Woman swear less than men. But significantly so. 50% less. Except in my house. Where the air is constantly blue. Until Lila and Joey come around then there’s a temporary amnesty. And if I’m honest, there’s nothing more wonderful than a posh-spoken woman being profane. From the mouths of dodgy Dagenham slappers it lacks class, as do most things. But to hear some Kensington yummy-mummy effin’ and blindin’ because she broke one of her Jimmy Choo heels getting into her Range Rover outside Harvey Nicks is the stuff of fantasy.

Why should Dominic Raab disrupt his holiday in Crete just because a few misplaced Brits are having problems in Afghanistan? He was probably just out of the pool, taking his first sip of an ice cold bottle of Mythos when his mobile rang, the word ‘Boris!’ displaying on the screen. And the kids are crying and his wife’s calling and… and… hit ‘green’?, or ‘red’…

Not like he’s got a job with any responsibility or anything. Fuck it, he thinks, knowing he must wait at least 2000 words before thinking it again, and finishes his beer at leisure. What harm could it do?

Happy Saturday

A xxxx