We were having a chat at work the other day, as you do, and wondering about the various possibilities for conversation offered by the imminent arrival of the office window cleaner. When he turns up for his regular monthly visit, he always seems to enjoy engaging us with a little bit of seventies-style mildly sexist, racist and/or homophobic blue-collar banter, during which any and all of the topical stories in the news he might wish to discuss at that time, in that "taxi-driver-like" way he has, might actually manifest themselves.
It's always a bit of a lottery as to which subject might crop up, although we do like to take a punt, even if we're inevitably wrong. Sometimes he disappoints and takes a thoroughly left-field approach, and sometimes he gets right on to the predicted subject in hand, although it took a couple of goes before he felt comfortable enough to offer an opinion about the celebrity abuse trials - a topic that we imagined would go straight in to the top of the charts with a metaphorical bullet...
As he once more failed to appear, however, the idle chat moved on and m'colleague started speculating upon the possibilities offered by his "creative swearing" to which I felt the need to half-wittedly reply:
"You'll probably be able to do a university course in that one day!"
(Because I still never know when to keep my mouth shut when it comes to smartarsery...)
"You probably already can..." m'colls mused, and this led me on to thoughts of both the Shakespearean insults which I mentioned to you a few weeks ago, and the award-winning roomfuls of writers whose main job (it seemed) was to come up with the bizarrely brilliant lines of abuse that were hurled out by Malcolm Tucker in the satirical series "The Thick Of It".
Some of the dialogue for that satirical sitcom was in fact improvised rather than being scripted (and the cast were credited for providing "additional material" which seems like nice work if you can get it...), and, to be honest, the series includes some very, very strong language indeed.
Peter Capaldi, the real-world actor responsible for putting life into the character of the Swearmeister General, Mr Malcolm Tucker, once stated that "Fundamentally 80% of the final cut is the script that we started with. The improvisation just makes it feel more real and not written."
Meanwhile, before rehearsals began, those very scripts were, I'm unreliably informed by Wikipedia, forwarded on to a "swearing consultant" who was, in reality, apparently actually a gentleman called Mr Ian Martin from Lancaster, who would then add in some of the more "colourful" language to up the comedy ante to a far higher (and obviously far lower) plane of existence.
How and why he became an expert upon such matters, and the "Go To" Guy for impressive linguistic profanity conjunctions remains a mystery, as does the reason why Lancaster should inspire such ingenius wordplay or creativity in someone's abusive responses, or, indeed, such ghastliness (depending upon your point of view of course…).
Lesser Blogfordshire is, of course, a very "family friendly" part of the great big internet, or, at least that "No Adult Content" button on the settings page claims that it is, so I couldn't possibly reprint for you any of the most creative potty-mouthery which got written for the series, although, if you follow any of the links listed below you'll get a pretty colourful range of epithets to mull over.
Peter Capaldi, the real-world actor responsible for putting life into the character of the Swearmeister General, Mr Malcolm Tucker, once stated that "Fundamentally 80% of the final cut is the script that we started with. The improvisation just makes it feel more real and not written."
Meanwhile, before rehearsals began, those very scripts were, I'm unreliably informed by Wikipedia, forwarded on to a "swearing consultant" who was, in reality, apparently actually a gentleman called Mr Ian Martin from Lancaster, who would then add in some of the more "colourful" language to up the comedy ante to a far higher (and obviously far lower) plane of existence.
How and why he became an expert upon such matters, and the "Go To" Guy for impressive linguistic profanity conjunctions remains a mystery, as does the reason why Lancaster should inspire such ingenius wordplay or creativity in someone's abusive responses, or, indeed, such ghastliness (depending upon your point of view of course…).
Lesser Blogfordshire is, of course, a very "family friendly" part of the great big internet, or, at least that "No Adult Content" button on the settings page claims that it is, so I couldn't possibly reprint for you any of the most creative potty-mouthery which got written for the series, although, if you follow any of the links listed below you'll get a pretty colourful range of epithets to mull over.
WARNING: If you are easily shocked by words that were considered perfectly acceptable for post-watershed broadcasting aimed at grown-ups, then DON'T click on the links, and don't say that I didn't warn you...!
"Feet off the furniture you Oxbridge twat, you're not on a punt now."
Hmm...
"Adult content..."
What does that mean, exactly...?
Presumably in internet terms, that means to pictures of anyone with their bits hanging out for all the world to see, and anything which could be regarded as being foul language, although, in my limited experience, it was seldom the "adults" who were caught snickering at the nudie photos and magazines when I was at school, and most of the more impressive examples of swearing I hear come from people I consider far too young to be exhibiting knowledge of such expressions...
Still here's those links I promised you…
Enjoy!!!
(Or not, obviously…)
I don't understand why so many people get so hot under the collar about such beautifully simple descriptive words. Most of them are simply words that, through overuse and context, have become black sheep through no fault of their own. I guess, as with most things moral, we can blame it on the Victorians who managed to make even the most innocent things bot ungodly and obscene. What berks.
ReplyDeleteI love the fact that we use the word 'berk' as if it has no sweary content when actually it's rhyming slang derived from The Berkshire Hunt.