‘The sheer scale of swearing is symptomatic of a lack of thought about speech’

WE blame many things on our cross-Channel Gallic friends.

Among their heinous crimes against us Brits is our liberal use of swearing - why else would someone uttering an oath plead: “Pardon my French”?

If it’s not the French, it must be someone else’s fault - so let’s categorise profanities as ‘Anglo-Saxon’ vocab.

There’s certainly been a huge rise in the use of four-letter words over recent decades.

Walking through any Somerset town or village, you hear people happily effing and jeffing about the weather, cursing a great night out they enjoyed or using expletives to describe a good friend.

I was surprised a few years back at a Taunton vicar’s unholy verdict on a graffiti ‘artist’ who desecrated his church wall.

It used to be that anyone using strong language in front of ‘ladies and/or children’ was told to button it. Choice language was OK in the Army - thus the expression to swear like a trooper - but foul-mouthed outbursts were solely for adult male company.

Nowadays, you’d no longer be threatened with having your mouth washed out with soap and water. But the sheer scale of swearing is symptomatic of a lack of thought going into how people speak.

With the Euros tournament underway, it’s maybe time to mention the ‘f’ word. ’ere we go - football. Former Manchester United player Norman Whiteside recently revealed he never swore on the pitch. He said he’d kept his mouth clean since he was 11, although some of his crunching tackles would have caused opponents to let rip.

Whiteside’s remarkable achievement was matched by my parents, who, despite at one stage living with the nightmare of three teenage sons in the house, never once swore.

Still on the sporting theme, how often do you hear potty-mouthed players cursing during televised matches, leading to commentators apologising on their behalf?

Or read in newspapers and magazines the first letter of a swearword followed by *!&? or the like? My English teacher once said: “Either write the swearword in full or omit it altogether, but don’t just bung in a load of meaningless signs.” The following week he banned swearing in essays due to certain pupils’ over-enthusiasm.