Dear Alan

I’m truly sorry that you are so offended by the language of ‘Bob’ Swords, but are we not getting a little carried away here? ‘Bob’ Swords, or as we like to call him, Lee Swords, is known in the media as a bit of an off-the-wall character, his public performances invariably verge on the outrageous and to portray him in any other way would be to give a false impression.

Now I could be wrong, but I am guessing the swearing you refer to is his use of the word, “bollocks”, as in “If the was a world championship for talking bollox, I’d be leading out the England team in Beijing…”? If so, I have to say that Lee uses the word once. As far as I can see that’s the only word in the entire 80 minutes that could possibly be deemed a profanity.

But is the word “bollocks” a swear word? Well it does have Anglo Saxon roots and although today it is often used as a noun to mean nonsense it’s use from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century was quite different. Bollocks (or ballocks) was allegedly used as a slang term for a clergyman. For example, in 1864, the Commanding Officer of the Straits Fleet regularly referred to his chaplain as “Ballocks”. It has been suggested that bollocks came to have its modern meaning of “nonsense” because clergymen were notorious for talking nonsense during their sermons.

The term ‘bollocks’ is in widespread use today and it’s a particular favorite of the Independent newspaper as a simple search of their articles will reveal. Even the pre-watershed BBC is quite guilty.

The BBC Radio 4 comedy programme “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue” described testiculation as the act of waving one’s arms about wildly (e.g. gesticulating) and simultaneously “talking bollocks”.

Of course, no self respecting, ambitious politician would use such a word, would he? Or she, perhaps? Well, the Plain English Campaign invited Tessa Jowell to submit the worst examples of jargon for its annual Golden Bull Awards after she revealed that she had compiled “a little book of bollocks” spouted by ministers.
In an unusually outspoken interview with the Financial Times, Ms Jowell urged the Government to “cut the crap” to reconnect with the public. “I have what I call a bollocks list where I just sit in meetings and I write down some of the absurd language we use, and we are all guilty of this, myself included.”

Industry isn’t immune either. Indeed there is a book entitled The Little Book of Management Bollocks. Talking bollocks in a corporate context is referred to as bollockspeak. Bollockspeak tends to be buzzword-laden and largely content-free, like gobbledygook: “Rupert, we’ll have to leverage our synergies to facilitate a paradigm shift by Q4″.

Bollocks has entered the medium of advertising, too. Ozzy Osbourne, that upstanding paragon of family values tells a therapist in a cell phone advertisement, “Well, honestly I feel like bollocks.”

It’s prevalent in a well known TV drama shown on both sides of the Atlantic, too. Actress Parminder Nagra who plays the British character Neela Rasgotra in the American medical drama series ER, has frequently used the word.

Perhaps then, bollocks is not a swear word. Perhaps it’s just obscene?

Alas, I find I cannot support you in this either. Back in 1977 a contentious little punk band released an album called, ‘Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols’. Their infamy was sealed equally by their banned single, ‘God Save The Queen’ released as it was in Her Majesty’s’ silver jubilee year, and then by swearing on the Bill Grundy TV show.

Such was the outrage of the establishment the Sex Pistols were prosecuted over the obscene term used in the album title. Alas the courts famously over-ruled the prosecution because the defense was able to clearly demonstrate that ‘bollocks’ is an Old English word and that it indeed referred to a priest, and could also be used to mean “nonsense”.

Which is, I suspect, what this is all about.

Sir, I respect your wish to bring up your daughter in the finest traditions but I fear you will struggle to succeed in protecting her from the serious matters never mind trivialities like this. We cannot censor the personality and speech of every individual on the planet just because one person feels threatened by a word that is only damned in his own mind.

I stood in a supermarket only yesterday and was stunned to hear a child no older than your daughter turn to a younger sibling and say “I ******* hate him, he’s a ****!” But should I have been shocked? Alas, no. For that is how young kids speak today. Feel free to blame the parents, the BBC, modern comedians, footballers, pop stars, the cinema, or whoever you like. But the damage is done. There’s no turning back, so to pick on a poor guy who has used an Anglo Saxon noun in its right and proper context is taking thimngs a little far.

Will you now be emailing the Independent? The Times? The BBC?

I think not.

You may also wish to consider that the fine old actor, Bernard Cribbins uses the word ‘bastard’ in Catching The Impossible. Wow! What shame he’s wrought upon us all. Lock him in the dungeons, I say!

Should I have failed to convince you, perhaps might care to consider a last minute Christmas present. It’s available from Amazon:

Talking Bollocks!: Totally Stupid Everyday Remarks (Hardcover)
by R. Lingo (Author)
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