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History of the F-Bomb in UK TV comedy

Started by ajsmith2, June 06, 2018, 12:26:10 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

EOLAN

Quote from: yesitsme on June 06, 2018, 03:37:02 PM
I never owned NIotO so if it is I'll be stunned.

I've still got the LP.

Got fuck all to play it on though.

Just to back YesItsMe. That portion definitely happens in the Live at Drury Lane Album by Monty Python. I always just assumed it was Carol Cleveland doing a posh voice but it probably isn't.

Phone-in caller Eliot Fletcher with Five Star on Going Live.

The first one to leave me stunned was Alan Partridge. Nobody could see it coming.

Steven

Quote from: EOLAN on June 06, 2018, 06:31:51 PM
Just to back YesItsMe. That portion definitely happens in the Live at Drury Lane Album by Monty Python. I always just assumed it was Carol Cleveland doing a posh voice but it probably isn't.

As a kid I always assumed it was Connie Booth doing an English accent, sounded like Polly to me.

the

Quote from: Autopsy Turvey on June 06, 2018, 04:39:15 PMIt had never occurred to me that the double use of 'fucking' in Bad News Tour (1983) must be the first scripted fuck in a British TV comedy, but I always just assumed that when the show went out, it must have been bleeped, but subsequent repeats and releases were not. I have no evidence for this, but surely all fucks were bleeped on TV in 1983? Obviously Channel 4 was a new minority interest channel, but if the fucks went unbleeped it seems amazing that there wasn't uproar in the press, who I'd guess were hyper-vigilant against this new threat to young morals.

I think it went unbleeped on broadcast. But interestingly, the swears were bleeped in the subsequent More Bad News, five years later.

Nigel Planer also thinks it may have been one of the first instances of 'fuck' used - elucidation from a recent live interview.

Quote from: Autopsy Turvey on June 06, 2018, 04:39:15 PMIronically, the sweary exchange includes the observation that "You can always put in a fucking bleep". Which I'd guess is what they would have done in a real documentary? It's also arguable that if they had bleeped the 'fucking' in that sentence, it would have been funnier.

Fancifully, you could twist it into the idea that the documentary was never finished (due to the embarrassment throughout and the director's on-camera disgruntlement), and that we're witnessing the salvaged footage, hence unbleeped.


Quote from: Brundle-Fly on June 06, 2018, 05:53:50 PMThen there was Jools Holland's "groovy fuckers" live advert trail for The Tube in 1987.
Quote from: Phoenix Lazarus on June 06, 2018, 07:00:04 PMPhone-in caller Eliot Fletcher with Five Star on Going Live.

Nice though it is to be reminded of Channel 5's Top 72 Uses Of The Word Fuck, this is more about deliberate scripted telly, rather than outbursts. Otherwise you've got John's Not Mad and things.

biggytitbo

It might be that cunt was heard more widely before fuck as cunt is said on an episode of the David Frost show in 1970.

drdad

Not exactly comedy but scripted fucks and cunts occur in the television version of Pinter's No Man's Land, first broadcast in 1978. The reaction to the broadcast is the likely inspiration for Derek and Clive's 'The Critics.'

Edit. No 'likely' about it - it's explicitly mentioned in the sketch.

studpuppet

I'm guessing (because it was the first place I think I heard it on a Channel 4 repeat a couple of years after), that the LWT broadcast of The Secret Policeman's Ball in 1979 might have had two 'fucks' that I can think of (if they weren't chopped out in the editing down):

John Cleese in the Cheese Shop sketch: "I don't care how fucking runny it is..."

and Ken Campbell with one of the best lines ever: "David Rappaport! Not the smallest man in the world... but FUCKING close!!"

Quote from: holdover on June 06, 2018, 04:42:57 PM

Years later The Boo Radleys got away with two fucks in their TOTP performance of C'mon Kids. I've been waiting for it to turn up on YouTube for years.

And yet, a few years before, in 1992, they edited out the word 'menstruating' with a silly sound effect in the video for FNM's Midlife Crisis.

Andy147

Quote from: Billy on June 06, 2018, 12:53:15 PM
The last time it genuinely astonished me was on a repeat of Drop The Dead Donkey in about 2000 - the original ep was early-mid 1990s (Sally shouting "FUCK off, George!") which might predate the Fast Show example.

The Evangelist (about 23 minutes in), first shown in November 1991.

yesitsme

I remember Emlyn Hughes running right down the barrel of the camera screeming 'What a fucking goal!'

Doesn't Paul Gascoigne say 'Fuck' or 'Bollocks' or 'Cunt' for the graphic of him for Italia 90?

Y'know that bit where they show the line up?


yesitsme

Quote from: EOLAN on June 06, 2018, 06:31:51 PM
Just to back YesItsMe. That portion definitely happens in the Live at Drury Lane Album by Monty Python. I always just assumed it was Carol Cleveland doing a posh voice but it probably isn't.

Whoever said it I do remember being properly stunned by it.  It seemed very gratuitous and there purely for shock rather than comedy value.

It might have been something at the time of course but if it wasn't then I'd say mission accomplished.

I think I've said this before on here but The Smith and Jones Do it All parody where they said 'Impersonating chickens and behaving like a twat'. really floored me.

They said 'twat' on TV?  TWAT?  It was also used in that BBC Dramollocks show about the sport journalist.  A fairly family friendly show turned the air in our house to ice when a character lossely based on Fred Trueman said 'Aye...we twatted a few corkies....'

I know in certain parts of the country 'twat' means 'a silly person'. 

Not where I come from it doesn't.




Panbaams

Quote from: yesitsme on June 07, 2018, 08:57:27 AM
Doesn't Paul Gascoigne say 'Fuck' or 'Bollocks' or 'Cunt' for the graphic of him for Italia 90?

Y'know that bit where they show the line up?

As mentioned in the TV version of An Evening with Gary Lineker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLOcIsaruAk&feature=youtu.be&t=1888

Attila

Quote from: another Mr. Lizard on June 06, 2018, 04:51:30 PM
There's the famous (apocryphal?) story about Max Miller betting a mate that he could slip the F-word into his BBC radio show the following week - winning the wager by performing a sketch set in an opticians and containing the line "every time I see F, you see K".

Interesting -- Soupy Sales is the subject of that urban legend in the US when his original show was on the air in the late '50s/early '60s

Quote from: snopes
He acquired a false reputation for sneaking all sorts of barely-disguised sexual innuendo and four-letter words into his program from kids who swore those dirty jokes they were telling had come straight from Soupy's mouth. The risqué gags attributed to Soupy over the years include the following:

    Soupy's playing a game with White Fang [his dog] in which the dog grunts the alphabet but consistently misidentifies the letter 'F' as the letter 'K' until Soupy blurts out in mock exasperation: "Everytime I see 'F,' you see 'K'!"

Quote from: Soupy Sales

[A]bout those myths. There were all these other things I was supposed to have said, like "What begins with 'F' and ends with 'UCK' ... a firetruck," or, "I took my wife to the ball game and kissed her on the strikes and she kissed me on the balls," or, "My wife is a great cook, she makes great pies — I eat her cherry and she eats my banana." And people would swear that I said it! Now, you know that in those days you couldn't say nuthin' [like that on television].



https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dirty-job/

Panbaams

Rodney, you plonker:

QuoteIn "Chain Gang", you can quite easily see AND hear Rodney say: "We've got him, we've fucking got him". This was when Albert suggested using the redial button on the mobile to get Arnie. Check it out, I was quite shocked this had got through the BBC and the BBFC for a PG certificate.

(details from http://www.ofah.net/blog/chain-gang/)

smudge1971

There was definitely a scripted Fuck Bomb in Who Dares Wins Series 1 which was 1983 but may have been after Bad News. There is a terrace chant (probably written by Phillip Pope) where the cast sing Here We Go and in the second verse sing "Fuckin' Hell, Fuckin' Hell, for a change".


Uncle TechTip

There was a show depicting a vandalised house and you could clearly see FUCK sprayed on the wall but I'm fucked if I can remember it.

There was a scene in Brookside like this but the word was BOLLOCKS.

Sorry, veering off the topic here.

yesitsme

Quote from: Uncle TechTip on June 07, 2018, 11:30:00 AM
There was a show depicting a vandalised house and you could clearly see FUCK sprayed on the wall but I'm fucked if I can remember it.

There was a scene in Brookside like this but the word was BOLLOCKS.

Sorry, veering off the topic here.

Soaps are a totally swear-free zone aren't they?  Brookside did have some mild swears in them when it first started but they were quickly expunged.

They don't mind showing us people getting raped, murdered, burned, electrocuted, ran over by trams, shoved under patios, cancered up to the eyeballs but heaven forfend anyone saying anything stronger than 'Flippin' eck our Toyah!'

Unless you've seen Buggernation Street of course.

Annie Labuntur

Quote from: yesitsme on June 07, 2018, 09:36:53 AM
Whoever said it I do remember being properly stunned by it.  It seemed very gratuitous and there purely for shock rather than comedy value.

As you said in a previous post, it's definitely Lyn Ashley. Carol Cleveland and Connie Booth aren't on the album. It's at the end of the Cocktail Bar sketch.

Annie Labuntur

Quote from: yesitsme on June 07, 2018, 09:36:53 AM
They said 'twat' on TV?  TWAT?  It was also used in that BBC Dramollocks show about the sport journalist.  A fairly family friendly show turned the air in our house to ice when a character lossely based on Fred Trueman said 'Aye...we twatted a few corkies....'

I know in certain parts of the country 'twat' means 'a silly person'. 

Not where I come from it doesn't.

Coincidentally, Lyn Ashley's husband gets away with it in a Rutland Weekend Television sketch about editing swears out of scripts - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvGtx74ofFI

Bazooka

I remember Dame Thora Hird complaining that the writers and producers on Last of The Summer Wine, didn't say cunt enough in the scripts, and fuck was a schoolboy term.

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: yesitsme on June 07, 2018, 11:34:47 AM
Soaps are a totally swear-free zone aren't they?  Brookside did have some mild swears in them when it first started but they were quickly expunged.

They don't mind showing us people getting raped, murdered, burned, electrocuted, ran over by trams, shoved under patios, cancered up to the eyeballs but heaven forfend anyone saying anything stronger than 'Flippin' eck our Toyah!'

Unless you've seen Buggernation Street of course.

When I last saw Corrie a few years back, I do remember ITV airing a particularly violent episode after the watershed and the scriptwriters threw in a "bastard' and a couple of 'bloody' s. Seemed odd that none of the characters enquired what 'a bastard' was and what 'bloody' meant, seeing as they've never heard swearing before.

Autopsy Turvey

In EastEnders in the 1990s, Mandy slipped in a conversational 'wankers' in the Vic. Certainly there's been fun watching hardened gangland killers say things like 'I don't give a stuff'.

Also: Ted Cunterblast.

Ghughesarch

Quote from: Bazooka on June 07, 2018, 01:09:56 PM
I remember Dame Thora Hird complaining that the writers and producers on Last of The Summer Wine, didn't say cunt enough in the scripts, and fuck was a schoolboy term.
Alan Bennett records that he was the only writer she would swear for, though he also notes that the word in question was 'penis' and the year was 1998 (in "Waiting for the Telegram").
I think it's a pity he didn't mention that he put his penis in her mouth, when giving an address at her memorial service.
Still, Thora's rissoles story is a good 'un.

Desirable Industrial Unit

Quote from: Autopsy Turvey on June 08, 2018, 12:00:18 AM
In EastEnders in the 1990s, Mandy slipped in a conversational 'wankers' in the Vic. Certainly there's been fun watching hardened gangland killers say things like 'I don't give a stuff'.

EastEnders had loads of low-level cussin' when it first started, leading to a bit of a tabloid outcry and it being 'cleaned up' (and eventually a bit in The Day Today, although reconfigured to be a bit more Coronation Street).  Everyone was a bloody sodding bastard, which proved to be a bit much at 7pm on a Tuesday.

a duncandisorderly

Quote from: yesitsme on June 07, 2018, 11:34:47 AM
Soaps are a totally swear-free zone aren't they?  Brookside did have some mild swears in them when it first started but they were quickly expunged.

the highest ratings we had for a single episode when I was there was a tidy 8 million for the monday night ep wherein damon grant is thrown back on the heap after a year of YTS with the promise of a job at the end of it. as he is leaving the site, he sees the next lad going in & tells him "don't believe any of the bollocks they tell you in there" or something similar.
we were sufficiently concerned about this that we shot an alternate clean version, which was dropped into the saturday (omnibus) repeat.
this would've been 1986-7.
despite the background of the show, redmond himself was keen not to offend, & once demanded an expensive re-shoot when a director had harry & ralph chatting over cans of beer. to be fair, harry cross would've used glasses- tankards, probably- but the alcohol was what irked our glorious leader, some said because he'd had a car accident in which alcohol was a factor. the canteen (in one of the perpetually unsold houses clockwise round from the grants') one summer got in some bottled shandy; he had it banished after a day.

so no, it wasn't brooky's language that was getting C4 into hot water, though the aerosolled graffiti in the first episode is what people remember. the tone of some of the storylines, & the bleakness of it all.... honestly, it's a good thing it was such a laugh working there, because there was little cheer in the plots.

(it was my first job, straight out of college, & I was from teesside which, at the time, was even more depressed than merseyside. I was paid a shade over five grand a year. skint all the time until 1989, really. but I had groupies... I'd visit mates in other cities, some still at college, & meet people who were doing theses on tv drama.. )

Quote from: Autopsy Turvey on June 06, 2018, 04:39:15 PM
It had never occurred to me that the double use of 'fucking' in Bad News Tour (1983) must be the first scripted fuck in a British TV comedy, but I always just assumed that when the show went out, it must have been bleeped, but subsequent repeats and releases were not. I have no evidence for this, but surely all fucks were bleeped on TV in 1983? Obviously Channel 4 was a new minority interest channel, but if the fucks went unbleeped it seems amazing that there wasn't uproar in the press, who I'd guess were hyper-vigilant against this new threat to young morals.

Ironically, the sweary exchange includes the observation that "You can always put in a fucking bleep". Which I'd guess is what they would have done in a real documentary? It's also arguable that if they had bleeped the 'fucking' in that sentence, it would have been funnier.

It was definitely unbleeped on the original broadcast.

holdover

During the later sections of the first Red Nose Day telethon I have a memory of Jonathan Ross not realising the camera was on him and saying something like " I never said I could fucking sing" then looking sheepish.  As an 11 year old this was the first Fuck I'd heard on the telly.

yesitsme

In November 1989 Bolton Wanderers and Swindon Town played out the longest league cup tie in English football history.  3-3 at the County Ground, 1-1 at Burnden, toss of the coin replay back at Burnden 1-1, replay of the replay 2-1 to Swindon.

As the writer of Wanderers' fanzine The Normid Nomad (voted Best Football Fanzine four seasons running*) we went up in the gantry with Bolton legend Dave 'Ding Dong Do' Higson.  Sometimes he'd talk to you 'on mic' and ask for your opinion and sometimes he'd just chat away.  With Higson to my left I was watching the action to our right.  Higson says 'Do you think they get games like this in Italy?' to which I replied 'Do they fuck!'

It wasn't on telly.  it was on VHS.

1989's not bad though.

They didn't have a bleep machine and had to put a warning at the start of the video.

*by us.  Although we were right.