Swear words in the Press are a sign of The Times

Swearing in newspapers… does it annoy you, offend you, or don’t you give a f***?

See what I did there? Gratuitous use of the f-word (almost) to shock or amuse, a device that is becoming a stock-in-trade for some columnists, particularly on The Times.

Swearing doesn’t shock me, not after 40-odd years in newsrooms. But it does make me feel uneasy when I see it in print.

The latest example was in a piece by Courtney Lawes, a former England rugby captain. He was writing about Henry Pollock, a Northampton Saints back row forward who scored two tries on his debut for England against Wales in this year’s Six Nations championship.

“He is, to be frank, a cocky little bastard,” Lawes writes in the first paragraph of his column in The Times sports pages.

In the second paragraph he reveals: “I was probably one of the only players at Northampton Saints who did not give Henry any shit.”

Later, Lawes writes of a training incident involving Pollock that he thought was “not the done thing. It was a proper dick move”.

I know, I know. Walk down any High Street and you will hear such phrases – and much worse – uttered casually by passers-by.

In a rugby changing room, a place I was familiar with many years ago, they hardly count as cursing. But I still feel uncomfortable when I see them in the pages of a family newspaper.

Is it a generational thing? Am I just old-fashioned, off the pace? When I joined the Daily Express in 1974 as a 26-year-old sub-editor, it would have been potentially a sacking offence to allow any of Lawes’s blasphemies into the paper.

I can imagine Arthur Firth, or Tony Fowler, or Alf Gregory poring over a still-damp page proof and suddenly bellowing: “Who subbed Courtney Lawes?”

An arm would be raised, with some trepidation. The culprit would be beckoned to approach the backbench, where they would be reminded of the moral imperatives that underpinned the Daily Express style book.

It was quite extreme in those days. Even the word sex was frowned on. Love could do some of the heavy lifting for despairing subs but the two words are not synonymous and so truth sometimes became collateral damage.

Swear words were often entirely redacted with asterisks, so that not the slightest clue remained as to what was said. This could lead to the sentence, perhaps even the whole story baffling the reader unless he counted the asterisks and worked out the options.

I sometimes thought you could make a collection of such stories and put them on the puzzles page.

Of course, the overarching aim was to prevent children from seeing words in the paper that adults used but they may not. The clue is in the phrase family newspaper.

It was all rather hypocritical. Kids of my generation picked up all the banned words on the junior school playground. We tried them out at home, got a cuff round the ear and put them away for later use.

Such hypocrisy still exists. Those writers who use them – Giles Coren is a serial offender – are middle class to a man or woman. They would be the first to scold their children if they came out with a profanity (though they might chuckle about it over a glass of cold Sancerre once Tabitha and Arlo were safely tucked up in bed).

The way round all this – though it is not available to every writer – is the use of wit and euphemism. One of my favourite splash headlines from the Sun was this beauty:-

DRINK’LL WRINKLE

YOUR WINKLE –

OFFICIAL

Oddly, I think it is the use of the word official that makes me laugh.

But I bow to the mistress of mucky mirth, the writer whom my colleague Helena Handcart fondly refers to as the Marvellous Ms Midgley, for her ability to write dirty without causing the slightest offence.

By chance, Carol Midgley’s column in Times 2 came out on the same day as Lawes wrote his blokeish, mildly vulgar piece. She was on top form.

Midgley seems to have a comical euphemism for every part of the female anatomy. One of my favourites is “lady garden”.

In a piece about penis flashing on the telly, she protested: “Poor old Sharon Stone’s ‘Lady Jane’ has been fair game since 1992 after, she claims, she was tricked into doing a knickerless scene in Basic Instinct.”

Midgley was irked by the controversy over the comparatively rare male full-frontal scene when actresses were so often forced to bare their breasts on TV.

“If there’d been this much fuss every time an actress had to swing her knackered old girls around a bedroom over the past 40 years the country would have ground to a halt.”

In another piece about tins and jars of posh food in your store cupboard marking you out as middle class, she commented: “Well, I don’t know about you, madam, but I do like to keep my front pantry pretty.”

I don’t even know if that’s euphemistic. But it is funny.

And at least it won’t corrupt the children.

*****

Richard Desmond, the former Express newspapers proprietor, had the predatory instinct of a corporate shark. He could smell money the way a Great White smells blood in the water.

So when word reached him of disquiet in high places about the way the National Lottery was being run, he summoned his lieutenants and told them to prepare to make a bid. After all, it was a goldmine, right?

Desmond’s Northern & Shell was eliminated from the bidding at an early stage. It might be that he did not offer a big enough share of profits to good causes. More likely, his background as the owner of adult magazines and TV channels counted against him.

The Establishment did not like it and his argument that “It’s not pornography – that’s illegal” cut no ice.

But the astonishing figures alone would suggest that he was right in his estimation of the Lottery’s potential. Last year, Allwyn, the company, that now operates the National Lottery, had revenues of €8.8 billion, up 12 per cent.

The multi-national gaming group owned by Czech billionaire Karel Komarek, increased its earnings to €1.4 billion, up 5 per cent.

And yet the company, which took over the licence to run the National Lottery from Camelot in 2022, made a loss in the UK of €73 million last year. It’s like banks losing money. You wonder: “How’s that even possible?”

It seems that Allwyn has been investing in technology to run the Lottery and the regulator has demanded a bigger share of the profits go to good causes. In other words, the money-go-round has stopped to let a few more people on.

*****

This used to be a rich country. It still could be. But not if we just keep giving away our money.

Did you know that student loans were available to foreigners? No, me neither, until I read The Sunday Times.

Apparently, thousands of students are enrolling on degree courses every year to take out loans they have no intention of paying back.

Suspicious applications for these fraudulent loans have been revealed by fake documents and duplicate addresses. Some of the applicants cannot even speak English. Their Romanian is pretty good, though.

Some enrol to claim a £4,000 loan, then drop out and enrol again the following year for another £4,000. It is costing us hundreds of millions of pounds. Are we mad? Did no one see this coming?

Foreigners may study here if they wish. But shouldn’t they be paying us, not the other way round?

It was a Blair initiative – to get 50 per cent of young people into university – that turned higher education into a lucrative business.

With vice-chancellors on £500,000 a year and some degrees not worth the fake vellum they’re printed on, I have long thought our university system was a racket.

Isn’t it time the guilty were sent down, one way or another?

*****

“What's the difference between ignorance and apathy? I don’t know and I don’t care.” – Anon

RICHARD DISMORE

25 March 2025