Great Comedy Mysteries Of Our Time, #627: Did Bruce Boa say 'motherfucking' on ITV's Astronauts?

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Anyone familiar with the early-80s space sitcom Astronauts, written by Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie?

Anyway, it doesn't matter - here's a clip of Bruce 'Waldorf Salad'  Boa playing the mission control bloke, in the first episode of Series 2 (broadcast 19 July 1983).

Now does he, or does he not, say 'motherfucking intercom'?

Obviously he doesn't, because in 1983 you couldn't even say that in a post-watershed C4 show, let alone on primetime ITV. But what on earth does he say? It's possibly 'mothertrucking', but then was 'motherfucking' a well-known enough expletive for said innuendo to work? And in any case, wouldn't 'mothertrucking' have been too close to 'motherfucking' anyway?

I jumped out of my seat when I saw it, so presumably lots of people did the same when it went out. But it obviously can't actually be 'motherfucking' can it?

Go on, have a listen.


Bruce 'Motherfucking Waldorf Salad' Boa

[chand]

Sounds like 'mothertrucking' to me.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Was 'mothertrucking' a recognised piece of pretend-swearing in 1983 though?

[lazyhour]

Why can I never get SendSpace to work any more, ever?  It just downloads a 5kb file which claims to be an mp3 but is in fact a file of HTML.

:(  I want to hear Bruce Boa not saying motherfucking!

[The Boston Crab]

That's great, it alternately sounds like 'trucking' and 'fuck*ng' to my ears, he's done a fine job on the 'tr' sound, really sending it to the back and pushing it through to give a bit of breathy ambiguity. It sounds like someone trying to tone down their swearing mid-word, I've heard people swear exactly like that, their insistence leading to swears but their subconscious pulling them back from ripping right through it. I can imagine how it would have made you leap, Lalla.

[chand]

Was 'mothertrucking' a recognised piece of pretend-swearing in 1983 though?

No idea, I was two. :)