Swearing in sitcoms before 1990s Page 2

Not necessarily "blast furnace waste". I used to be a welder. Slag is whatever brittle shell bits are formed when molten metal oxidizes. Before graduating to welding, my job on one construction site was to follow the welders around with a small pointy 'slag hammer' with a springy handle, tapping off the slag. Had to be done to ensure all welds were smooth - and slag could not be left on prior to painting.

Minder had a lot "Gordon Bennett" and "leave it out" and "do what?" and "do me a favour" - without ever resorting to swearing and was all the better for it. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was just Minder with swearing and a dildo and a bit more violence.

Quote: Alfred J Kipper @ 1st February 2014, 8:12 AM GMT

True but it does I reckon depend on the swear word. In The Trip I didn't notice much swearing but then they put the naughtiest one in on a visual. This was obviously done for impact, to be cool to use the C word on TV when it's only recently been allowed on. It spoiled it for me.

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That bit jarred for me, but not for the same reason - simply that it was copied and pasted from Steve Coogan's stage show. In the show it led into the merry singalong number 'Everyone's a Bit of a C*** Sometimes', so having the word in print as 'shock value'...hmmm, not so much methinks!

Quote: Tim Azure @ 1st February 2014, 9:01 AM GMT

Is that a clever comedian or a clever comic writer?

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The Thick of It had Ian Martin, the "Swearing Consultant"

Thus...

"If you mock Al Jolson again, I'll f**king kill you!"

...became...

"You take the piss out of Al Jolson again, and I will remove your iPod from its tiny nano-sheath and push it up your cock. Then I'll put some speakers up your arse and put it on to shuffle with my f**king fist. Then, every time I hear something that I don't like - which will be every time that something comes on - I will skip to the next track by crushing your balls!"

Either way, the latter I would class as imaginative swearing/abuse.

No amount of swearing could ever shock now (even if you just repeated c***/f*** hundreds of times, as Alexi Sayle did in the Mr Sweary version of "Ello John Got a New Motor?"), so presenting the swearing in an imaginative way is the only way for it to have any kind of an impact.

In Shelley Mrs Hawkins calls Shelley a 'dirty sod',also 'sarcy sod' I think.

Bastard was quite a popular one I think...

Quote: Tursiops @ 1st February 2014, 10:51 AM GMT

Our e-mail filter at work will not allow me to send or receive the word 'slag'. This is a bit of a nuisance, as I am currently working on a project concerning blast furnace waste...

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I hope the blast furnaces in question are not in Sc**thorpe

Quote: SimonWing @ 1st February 2014, 8:12 AM GMT

Do you not find the swearing of Tucker/Jamie in The Thick of It "clever"?

Not having a go. Just curious....

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I find the swearing in Thick of It makes it unwatchable for me.

Give me a really clever (non-swearing) Yes Minster/Prime Minister any day.

I have a thing about swearing.

For example I love Python, and when I first saw Life Of Brian at the cinema I fell off my chair with laughter a few times.

However even back then I did not like the swearing.

There is a scene where Cleese is asked if they are the people's front of Judea (or some such phrase) and he turns round and says "F**k Off, we're the Judean people's front".

I have always been a Cleese fan (since way back in "I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again" on radio), and he is a very intelligent man, but it upset me to hear him swear like that.

If comedy is good it does not need ANY swearing at all.

P.S. Funnily enough they showed the first Yes Minster on TV the other day and I watched it. Hacker makes a huge mistake and has to go to Number 10 to apologise, and someone walks into the room and says to him "You are such an arse" (but he said "arse" in the posh way people say it, like "ass" so I'm not sure if that counts as swearing).

John Cleese has a fantastic voice and presence for swearing.

Quote: beaky @ 30th January 2014, 6:43 PM GMT

I was astonished while reading an interview with Tracey Emin in The Telegraph yesterday that they asterisked "slagging off" into sl***ing off.

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Maybe what Emin said was "slf**king off"?

Quote: Thom Rolfe @ 11th February 2014, 4:49 PM GMT

Maybe what Emin said was "slf**king off"?

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Yes, perhaps they has an asterisk shortage.

Didn't Rentaghost use to have 'gadzooks' in it a fair old bit?

If memory serves, gadzooks and bloody used to be amongst the strongest swear words around as they derived from blasphemy rather than from bodily functions/excreta (which we used to be fairly ok with, seeing as how we all do/have them...)

I like rhyming swears, which softens them. Like "F**k a duck!" or "Shit a brick!" (Not rhyming but assonance in that one)

Quote: Guilbert @ 11th February 2014, 12:49 PM GMT

P.S. Funnily enough they showed the first Yes Minster on TV the other day and I watched it. Hacker makes a huge mistake and has to go to Number 10 to apologise, and someone walks into the room and says to him "You are such an arse" (but he said "arse" in the posh way people say it, like "ass" so I'm not sure if that counts as swearing).

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Of course Arse is a swear word. He wasn't talking about a f****ing Donkey!

And sometimes an odd and totally unexpected FUCK is funnier than continuous swearing.

Lucky you, Chappers!

Quote: beaky @ 11th February 2014, 11:26 PM GMT

Lucky you, Chappers!

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