Why is swearing worse than cheating?

Nick Green,
Tuesday 5th September, 2006

We all agree that there are certain things that should not be exposed to the children of the world. Some things are best kept hidden from their pure, untainted minds.

So these days, pretty much everything is censored and edited; monitored and modified; regulated and calibrated.

We can no longer advertise smoking - because all the children in the world would supposedly succumb to the billboards and smoke the living arse out of themselves. (Because now that tobacco advertising is banned, kids will never see another cigarette again, will they?)

We can’t show violence in videogames unless there’s an ‘18’ certificate the size of a large boil plastered on the front cover – just in case “Little Johnny” goes a little mental and, say, decides to imitate the “what happens when animals are introduced to fireworks” scenario he saw on “DeathStick 4” or “Vomit of Misery 2: The New Death” (fake titles obviously, though they do sound interesting).

And recently, there has been talk concerning the implications of kids seeing footballers such as Wayne Rooney swearing their thick heads off.

Now, football, whether played in the playground or at the Nou Camp, is an extremely passionate and emotionally charged affair.

What happens when we’re worked up about something we love and something’s not gone our way?

We get angry.

And what spills out of our mouths like festered sewage when we’ve been brought down in the area by a challenge with all the graceful subtlety of a gorilla masturbating in a library?

Big, fat, horrible swear words.

It’s completely natural. Something the human race has done for centuries. It’s done to emphasise a point we may have. It’s common knowledge that “passionate outbursts” have always been very much a part of football’s gritty legacy.

Now, I know Rooney’s vocabulary is uncouth to the say the least but it genuinely surprised me when there was outcry and serious talk of football not being allowed to be shown before the watershed after he was shown mouthing a few choice expletives during some pre-watershed highlights.

The reasoning behind this chorus of disapproval was that it was a bad influence on children. People were worried that if their kids saw Rooney calling the referee a “f**king motherf**king f**k tossing twat f**k” (or something different yet equally vulgar), they would instantaneously start sounding like inebriated dock-workers… which seems a tad pointless to me.

Kids swear anyway. They always have done and they always will do. Well, maybe not in front of their parents - but everywhere else? You can bet your oh so precious life on it.

Do you really think that at lunchtime, all the kids walk round the school playground saying to one another, “Golly gosh! That Mrs. Baxter is a right old biddy. I do dislike her so.”? No, of course they don’t.

Most kids will learn their first swear word at around the age of eight and they won’t fail to learn more as they get older.

By the time kids are teenagers, they’ll have acquired most of the swear words in circulation and then use them all with admirable effect when they get hacked down by the school tosser during a lunchtime game. And this is irrespective of Mr. Rooney.

Given that fact, ask yourself this – if you had a choice, what would you rather our children be doing - swearing from time to time (like most kids do anyway) or cheating, lying and swindling their way through life?

You see, all the exaggerated hullabaloo about footballers swearing seems to pale in comparison to the bigger problem in football – the ever burgeoning act of what the panellists call “amateur dramatics”. Like Sandi Thom’s “I Wish I Was a Punk-Rocker (With Flowers in My Hair)”, it’s everywhere and about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit.

One example of play-acting that immediately springs to mind was last season when Chelski played Liverpool at Stamford Bridge. Arjen Robben, who is undoubtedly an extremely talented player, lost the respect of so many fans when he feigned an injury to his face. It would have been comic genius if it hadn’t been so depressing. Sure enough, he fooled the dope dressed in black and got the Liverpool goalkeeper sent off - all thanks to his “amateur dramatics”.

The moral of the story? Cheating gets you everywhere.

If you want to increase your chances of winning a match, cheat your slimy arse off. That’s what we and certainly all our children will have learnt from our footballing idols over the next few years because it’s getting more and more common. In the near future, I guarantee the playgrounds will be full of Klinsmanns, Rivaldos and Robbens diving and spinning in the air like drunken ballerinas.

And once they’ve grown up, they’ll be programmed to lie and cheat every chance they get.

But that’s nowhere near as bad as them swearing, is it?

No telly before tea-time

Nick Green,
Monday 4th September, 2006

“No telly until you’ve had your tea” – a stern command which echoes through many a household as soon as the kids return from school and turn the television on.

The reasoning behind this rule is obviously to make sure they do their homework instead of gazing aimlessly at the idiot box like semi-conscious junkies.

Pretty much all of us have experienced this domestic regulation at some point in our youthful, halcyon days.

For the past few months, however, children (and indeed anyone else lucky enough to be on their holidays) were able to watch TV before tea-time without any cause for concern.

Well… that’s not entirely accurate.

You see, I’ve just finished my degree and am currently “between jobs” – by that I mean I sit on my arse all day, doing sod all.

So, to pass the time I switch on my telly and watch some daytime programming.

And oh my God, it’s awful. It shouldn’t be, but it is.

You see, once I’ve awoken from my deep slumber, I like to peruse the channels I receive on my digital TV whilst munching happily on my Coco Pops. However, I think you’ll understand when I tell you that I soon lose my appetite for my cocoa puffed rice when I have to choose between watching a fifteen year old girl who’s had five kids and doesn’t know where three of them are, and having to endure what I can at best describe as a human walrus asking me if I’ve been injured at work.

There is a plethora of truly dreadful programmes that run throughout the day, and I can honestly say I’d rather be gang-probed by Noel Edmonds and that big-nosed idiot from The Mint who thinks he’s God than watch any of them. It’s that bad.

The Jeremy Kyle Show is just one of these dreadful programmes. Every show, we are mercilessly exposed to guests that are about as sharp as a sack of wet sewage and behave like monkeys on crack.

The thing is I can’t decide who’s worse on The Jeremy Kyle Show – the attention-seeking thickheads that guest on the programme or the eponymous host.

At least the guests are blatantly horrible; people who are so unequivocally shameless they don’t care that a whole nation is laughing at the fact that they can’t go four seconds without screaming at each other or calling one another “slag” or “bitch” or “bleeping bleep”.

Mr. Kyle is a beast of an entirely different order. Well, I say beast, I mean bastard. He is arrogant, over-bearing and rarely refrains from contorting his face in utter disgust whilst “listening” to the multitude of guests he has on. His sole objective on the show actually seems to be to rile up his guests until they snap, much in the same way a spoiled brat tugs on the family dog’s tail until it turns round and bites his spotty, little bastard face off.

Kyle’s constant aggressiveness is just too pantomimic to be taken sincerely. “You better change your ways, sonny, or you’ll regret it,” I’ve heard him say to some tearaway brat. Regret it? Seriously, what’s he going to do – kill him?

When the show eventually goes for a break, it’s no surprise that the advertisements don’t offer any solace.

Once Jeremy assures us that “he’ll be back soon”, we are then usually greeted by Phil Tufnell telling us that he “knows nuffink about loans”. Well, if that’s the case, why is he presenting an advert for a loan company? Once he sits down and takes a fake sip of his cup of water (well, it is non-alcoholic after all), we are told by a deliberately attractive woman how brilliant and amazing loans are. Nearly every advert that follows runs along the same lines, sadly.

This doesn’t bother me as much anymore because I’ve developed an immunity to these shameless attempts to con people into thinking they’re getting a good deal.

What good, old Phil really should be telling us is what he DOES know - that a large, unpleasant man in a black bomber jacket will visit your house when you can’t afford the repayments at a “competitive” rate.

Sadly, the dross doesn’t end there.

The endless barrage of antiques programming is bringing me closer to the metaphorical edge.

You have to admit, Bargain Hunt is now so dull and wooden it may as well be a library, and Cash in the Attic’s unbearable overuse of puns makes it sound like a fifty-two year old DJ.

I never used to feel nauseous when watching daytime programmes (except when I was off sick from school), but nowadays I’d rather cover my genitals in honey and dance naked round a beehive than turn my TV on before tea-time.

You see, even though we’ve all grown up and shaken off the shackles of parental regulations, the “no telly before tea-time” rule has never been more necessary.

Introduction

I've started vomitting words out onto pieces of paper and written some articles about stuff and that. The articles actually appear in the Huddersfield Examiner's supplement called 'Fresh' but are so edited that not even the ghost of Mary Whitehouse would object. Anyway, I wanted to see what people thought of my verbal diarrhoea - problem is, most of the diarrhoea is cleaned up and disposed of to avoid complaints from people who don't like to hear such terrible words as 'bastard' and 'idiot' - that's right, 'idiot' got edited from the final version.
So, feel free to read them when I post them as blogs and if you like them, great. If you don't like them, I'll nod understandingly whilst secretly wishing for you to choke on Noel Edmonds' sweaty balls.