A Garden Of Curses
There were three of them. Two of them held me down while the third punched me in the stomach. Between blows the fist-happy leader of the trio was offering me an easy way out of my predicament. All I had to do was use a "sweary word" and the torture would be terminated. A small group of spectators watched helplessly. My tormentors came from the ranks of an Easterhouse street gang and no one dared step in to rescue me. One or two of my friends urged me to take the deal.
"Just say it, Jeff!" they shouted, "nobody will tell on you."
That, you see, was the problem. As much as I feared for my very life, I was even more scared that my parents would find out that I'd been using "bad words". They'd brought me up with the well-known promise of a carbolic tongue-scrubbing should I stray towards the dark side of Glasgow street-talk. So I took the beating. Even when the psychos reduced their demand from the F-word to a simple "bloody", I still refused to give in. My pals thought this was taking stubborness to new heights of stupidity. Finally the bullies got fed up and let me live. Good of them, really.
All this happened when I was eight years old, but I still have a thing about strong language.
These days, I'm ashamed to say, it doesn't take a punch in the belly to get me going. Show me a spreadsheet from our finance department and there had better not be small children in the room.
The ´óÏó´«Ã½, of course, has editorial guidelines about such things. There's even a list of the strongest swear words. These have been checked with groups of viewers and listeners so they must be true. (Gosh, can you imagine that research project!) Apparently people get most upset if you combine a strong swear word with blasphemy. Next worst thing is to use that American expression that suggests a person might be having sexual relations with his Mom.
In these days of Russel Brand-inspired compliance procedures, I often have to make a judgement call on what can or cannot go on the air. Take our new sit-com, for instance. It's called No Hard Feelings, stars John Gordon Sinclair, and deals with the sexual and career problems of a middle-aged man in Scotland. Why, that could be any one of us. Not me, obviously...but anyone else.
There's also some "bad words" in the script and, truth be told, after the recording, and even though the studio audience didn't complain, I asked that some of the language be edited out. Not all of it, though. There's a scene in which the main character is splashed with a bucket or urine. Except, he doesn't cal it that. Well, people don't, do they? Not in comedy programmes anyway.
Moving swiftly on, I'm glad to see that train operators are cracking down on passengers who swear at their staff. I arrived in Edinburgh tonight to see posters on the station concourse suggesting that anger can be expressed in other ways. It suggests that "cheesed off" is preferable to the Gordon Ramsay version. If only I had tried that with those Easterhouse headcases!
Happily I did not arrive in the city by plane. I don't doubt that airborne visitors, be they tourists or aliens from outer space, would be mightily impressed by the landscape. But
if you've ever looked at Edinburgh on one of those Google satellite maps then don't linger on the field between Ratho Station and the airport. Not if you're easily offended. (and for that reason I've removed the direct link to it, so you'll have to go searching if you do want to be offended!) Some wag with crop-circle skills has left a not-so-charming message of welcome for those who come from the sky.
It's enough to make you curse.
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