The History of Swearing

1900

Shot by an anarchist while standing on a Brussels railway station, The Prince of Wales utters the immortal words, “Fuck it, I’ve taken a bullet."

1936

Music hall comedian Hector Thaxter becomes the first man to say “Arse” on the radio.

1947

After cutting food rations as part of a new economic drive, Chancellor Hugh Dalton is accosted by a beggar in the street who says, “You bloody bastard! What am I meant to do, eat shit?”

1957

Interviewed live on BBC News, a British teddy boy is asked his opinion of Bill Haley. He replies, “Haley? I wouldn't piss on him if he went up in flames. I’m an Elvis man meself.”

1965

Appearing on a late night live satire programme called BBC3, Kenneth Tynan becomes the first man to say “Fuck” on TV. A national fit of apoplexy follows with one Tory MP suggesting that Tynan should hang!

1967

After watching an episode of "Till Death Us Do Part" that includes 44 uses of the word “BLOODY”, Mary Whitehouse fumes, “This is the end of civilisation as we know it”

1969

Buzz Aldrin becomes the first man to swear on the moon “Bloody hell,” he tells Neil Armstrong, “I’ve just taken a shit in my space suit”

1972

Oxford English Dictionary includes the words “FUCK” and “CUNT” for the first time. The National Campaign for Real Swearing issues a statement which reads: “We’d be a bunch of lying cunts if we didn’t say that we were totally fucking delighted”

1974

Originating from the Australian “Nasty as Fuck”, the word NAFF is introduced to the British public via Ronnie Barker in Porridge. As in “Naff off Godber!” However the expression looses its appeal when Princess Anne starts using it.

1976

1. On tour in Hong Kong and unaware that he is miked up, The Duke of Edinburgh tells a photographer  “Fuck off or I’ll have you shot.” 

2. The moral majority get into a proper old lather after Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols appears on live TV and calls presenter Bill Grundy “A fucking rotter”.

1979

A Bar steward at a Conservative Club in Middlesex is sacked after greeting a club member with the words, “All right, you fucking old bastard, we haven't seen you for fucking ages!” He is later ruled to have been unfairly dismissed on the grounds that his words “were just a form of greeting”.

1982

British Leyland workers begin their so-called swearing strike after one of the top brass describes them as, “fucking bastards and fucking working-class pigs”.

1983

Jools Holland lets slip with the phrase “Groovy fuckers” on a live broadcast of The Tube and is suspended for six weeks. 

A Pakistani umpire calls Mike Gatting “a fucking cheating bastard” during a Test Match.

1990

Female golfer Muffin Spencer-Devlin is banned from a top ladies tournament after calling officials, “A fucking bunch of incontinent wankers!”.

1991

Rev. Ian Gregory, secretary of The Polite Society, proposes that existing swear-words are banished and replaced with “nice words like 'breadstick' and 'cotton socks'”. A spokesman for The National Campaign for Real Swearing responds by saying “The good reverend can go and fuck himself!”.

1993

1. Pete Sampras, the world’s top male tennis player, shouts at the Wimbledon crowd, “Thank you very much, you mother fuckers!” 

2. A Briton in Saudi Arabia is sentenced to 40 lashes after telling a member of his staff to, “Stuff it up your fat arse you old wanker”. 

3. Boston grunge band, The Anal Cunts, release their first single.

1995

Annoyed at the constant chattering of children during a performance of “Macbeth” at a Manchester theatre, actor Paul Higgins strides to the front of the stage and bellows, “Shut the fuck up or I’ll rip your fucking heads off!”

1996

Students hackers tinker with the digital storage system at Britain's first talking bus stop in Leeds, with the result that a queue of passengers expecting a recorded timetable are greeted with the words, “Fuck off and walk you lazy bastards”.

1999

With the advent of Channel 4's "Bremner, Bird, & Fortune" and "The Eleven O'clock Show", all known swear words are finally used openly, in entertainment television.
The National Campaign For Real Swearing comments "About fucking time too!"

Now BBC plans an 'I love the C-word' documentary By JAMES TAPPER - 4th January 2007   The BBC came under new fire after it announced plans for a £200,000 TV documentary devoted to the most offensive word in the English language. The programme - tentatively titled I love The C-Word - is billed as examining why the word has become more mainstream in recent years. Contributors will include feminist academic Germaine Greer and Eve Ensler, the author of The Vagina Monologues, an acclaimed stage play which features women talking about their genitals. Both the BBC and North One claimed it will not be sensationalist. A spokeswoman for the programme said: "It will look at how a word that was considered completely unacceptable has moved into the mainstream, particularly by younger people. The tone will be a serious exploration of the word." And North One's head of factual entertainment John Quinn told the TV industry magazine Broadcast: "It will be a grown-up discussion about how we have got to where we are now with this word without being either sensationalist or po-faced. "It is perhaps one of the last words that has the ability to stop someone in their tracks and it is fascinating to see how differently it is perceived around the world." I Love The C-Word is the latest in a growing number of BBC programmes that have featured the word in recent years, despite internal BBC research showing that it is the one viewers hate the most. Last year it featured 12 times in The Chatterley Affair, a BBC4 drama about the 1960 obscenity trial over D. H. Lawrence's book. It has been used frequently in the award-winning BBC4 political sitcom The Thick Of It, starring Chris Langham as fictional Social Affairs Minister Hugh Abbot and Peter Capaldi as belligerent spin doctor Malcolm Tucker. And Germaine Greer made a 10-minute film about the history of the word for the BBC2 series Balderdash And Piffle. In 2004, the BBC received a record number of complaints about its decision to broadcast the controversial Jerry Springer: The Opera. It contained 8,000 obscenities including the use of the f-word 200 times and the c-word nine times