(sighs)
This brings me back.
1988.
Where it all began.
The career for want of a better word.
You will often get a warning before certain TV programmes saying that
this programme may contain strong language which some viewers may offensive.
This is one of those shows.
How did that gobshite get on the television?!
You're more likely to swear if you've got a large vocabulary
and I think that goes to why perhaps the Irish swear more.
There'll be lots of fuck you, fuck this, fuck that, fuck off.
Hearing you curse on stage is like hearing your dad curse.
You think oh Jesus this is serious!
Ah for fuck's sake, ref, get a grip!
The minute you use a word 'fuck' as a referee on a football pitch
to dictate to a player, you've lost them.
(laughing) What's wrong with you?
You know bleeding well what's wrong with me.
How do you really want to ruin someone's honour?
You want to bring the darkness down on them.
With all due respect in the most unparliamentary language (BLEEP) you, Deputy Stagg. F*** you.
I haven't gone through a day in this office not swearing at someone.
You swore in the Mansion House?
Shit and fuck are bad words but it's just a bit of fun.
Prick is just as bad as shit and fuck. You're not allowed say any of them.
What about cunt?
Sweet mother of holy divine fuck!
What does that even mean?
We curse a lot in this country.
We swear casually and fluently and with great relish. We love it.
Ya bollocks is often a term of affection.
Now Oscar Wilde thought it lacked imagination and visitors to Ireland
are often shocked altogether by our salty language.
So why do we do it?
Are we just rebellious by nature?
Irreverent, deeply frustrated or are we just fun-loving colourful people?
Do we have a lot to swear about?
Is it something to be celebrated or ashamed of?
And where do you draw the line?
Do we have a fucking problem?
# #
I've always been curious about why we swear generally.
What are the psychological and linguistic reasons for cursing and swearing.
But I'm more interested in our unique relationship with swearing in this country and the way we communicate.
What does it say about us? About who we are?
According to Mark Twain we begin to swear before we can talk.
I think there is some merit in that.
I learned to talk in Carrickmacross Co. Monaghan
and probably experienced the illicit thrill of bad language for the first
time here at St Joseph's National School.
I kind of enjoyed going to school like I never didn't want to go to school or anything.
I quite liked it.
Most of the memories are playing football outdoors or sitting in the
classroom looking out onto the field of dreams.
There was very little bad language in my house growing up.
In school the words the boys would use would be very innocent really.
It would be words like bum and maybe when you were a little bit older diddies.
They were funny words but you got a little bit of a thrill saying them.
I certainly never used the f-word when I was at school.
It would be more name calling.
If somebody was being mean to you, you need a word to describe that person
and this is where bad language begins.
It's where it starts from in a sense.
You need to be able to put people in their place.
I remember for example being called a skitter.
You'd be regularly called a skitter.
It was usually something that was directed at kids by adults.
You little skitter.
And then someone tells you much later that skitter literally means diarrhoea.
It's an old Scandinavian word which they use quite a lot in Northern Ireland and in the Border region.
So skitter is a good word.
So to be called a skitter...you think OK and it begins to make sense.
The penny drops.
I don't like him, he's a skitter and I certainly don't like diarrhoea.
That makes perfect sense.
So then you begin to use the word skitter to describe someone who's really annoyed you.
Who might have pushed you in the playground during a game of football.
You skitter.
I wasn't really aware of how much I swore until I had kids myself.
I never heard my parents swear, either of them.
I never swore in front of them to this day.
Even though they're much more relaxed about it now.
I still wouldn't swear in front of them.
But when it comes to my own kids, I've always had appalling double standards.
It would be a bit like with the drink, lecturing the teenagers
about the perils of alcohol and the standards expected in this house
while you're actively uncorking a second bottle of wine.
You don't have a leg to stand on.
I suppose I would have a...
We would have had a policy probably not verbalised about swearing.
The kids knew not to swear.
We certainly tried not to curse in front of them.
Probably failed to a certain extent.
They didn't curse much in the house growing up.
< Motherfuckers!
Motherfucker - it's my new thing.
Watched this film last night. My dad got it off pirate Pauline
and it's about these two lads and they wear these crackin' suits
and they rock about just shooting people and eatin' cheeseburgers
and they're all motherfucker this, motherfucker that.
It's got your man in it.
Outside Galway I met a friend of mine who is not just a leading comedian
known for his colourful use of language but also a parent of many children.
With most Irish parents, the first time their child curses is a moment of delight.
I just want to find a quote here.
I came across this quote by an Irish writer Emma Comerford
who wrote a book called Irish Bitches Be Crazy.
She said, "The guaranteed way to become the most celebrated child
in an Irish family is to start swearing at a very young age."
I think there's truth in that. Totally.
Cursing is the uncontrolled moment.
It's where you slightly...you curse because you don't fully understand what's happening or you just...
There's a gap between what is felt and what is thought and your ability to express it.
I was thinking that if Christ was Irish and walking around with Apostles,
they'd be "what the fuck, what?
Fuck off!"
He would have been clearing the temple full of the moneylenders.
"Get the fuck out...."
It is about the desire to be out of control and the expression of the fact that you are out of control.
I think that stand-up has more in common with James Joyce
than it does with Seamus Heaney.
Stand-up is the uncontrolled moment.
A few words of warning about the show just to get us started.
In America there'd be lots of cursing. AUDIENCE LAUGHS
There'd be lots of fuck you, fuck this, fuck that, fuck off,
who the fuck, when the fuck, you fucking fucker ya.
Fuck off.
There's a reason I curse so much.
It's not to do with a lack of vocabulary.
It's because I'm an Irish person.
I'm an Irish person speaking the English language.
And the English language doesn't suit my soul.
I should be speaking the Irish language but I don't understand a fucking word of it! LAUGHTER
I would have a sort of policy where I wouldn't curse on stage.
But I wouldn't mind if one slips in.
But I do find myself cursing on stage an awful lot when I'm under pressure.
When your back is to the wall if you've got a rowdy audience
or if you've trying out new material and you're not very confident.
And you want to make it a little bit punchier or a bit throwaway.
Like I don't care.
Hearing you curse on stage is like hearing your dad curse.
You think "oh Jesus this is serious".
That's my sense of it.
I get that as well.
You definitely feel like if you use them sparingly it can have a much more profound effect on an audience.
Hearing me curse is like hearing a wino curse.
You kinda go...what else would you expect?
Ah yeah.
We tend to exaggerate everything.
So we exaggerate our passions a little,
we exaggerate our frustrations.
I guess maybe it was partly to do with the fact that the physical
reality that we had for so long was so oppressive and down
that it was the only way we could fly was just through language
and dancing and amplifying things that couldn't be controlled by the oppressor.
# #
Let's just say when it comes to cursing, swearing and blaspheming,
we have form.
We've had the reputation for swearing for a very long time.
As far back as 1720, Jonathon Swift wrote a short satire called The Swearer's Bank.
The idea being that everyone paid a shilling for every time they swore.
He says, "It is almost unnecessary to mention that this has become
a pet vice among us and though age renders us unfit for other vices,
yet this where it takes hold never leaves us."
So then he does his calculations.
"It is computed by geographers that there are 2 million in this kingdom of Ireland
of which number there may be said to be 1 million of swearing souls."
He reckoned that the proceeds would go towards charitable schools,
clergymen's widows and sailor's bastards.
In 1913, George Bernard Shaw outraged polite society with the word 'bloody'
in his play Pygmalion.
James Joyce wrote shockingly filthy letters to his wife Nora Barnacle.
And I've come to Gort Go. Galway to speak to somebody who's continuing that fine tradition,
the writer of The Glorious Heresies, who once went by the name of Sweary Lady on social media.
I read The Glorious Heresies. I loved it.
I know it was described by one reviewer as a fizzing, foul-mouthed debut,
instead of just a brilliant debut.
But I sense with you as a writer that that rhythm is very important.
You are trying to capture the way we speak.
Sometimes we use foul language to punctuate our sentences
or to give our sentences extra oomph.
Yeah, there's a musicality to it almost.
I feel like with Irish people, every word is chosen for a reason.
But it may just be for rhythmical reasons.
You're saying if I really want this sentence to push through
I'm going to have to go "Pu-du-du-du-du..."
Therefore fuck is what is needed in this particular part.
It's very much a part of our culture. Yeah.
It seems to me that we do swear an awful lot.
Mmmm.
I think that the Irish have such a love of language and a love of storytelling,
a love raámeés-ing and a love of tall tales and lies.
There's a lot of delight in words in general.
So why not use our swears if we know that one applied here will make the sentence funny?
Or one applied here will make the sentence really get to you.
Beyond that as well Irish people when we speak, we're trying to be entertaining as well.
You know what we say about Irish people trying to have a conversation
is that nobody is really listening, they're just waiting for the gap
to get in there with their thing.
Absolutely.
Like Roddy Doyle. He kind of changed the game a bit certainly
Would he have been an influence on you for example?
Hugely. It's kind of like I can track my life before Roddy and after Roddy.
I had always written as a kid so I was writing little stories about ponies and everything like that.
You can kind of see... Fuckin' ponies.
It became fuckin' ponies.
You can kinda see where Roddy started having an influence.
Suddenly I was writing about Irish kids on Irish council estates
saying bold Irish words.
Ah, there you are, Dessie. How's it going?
You keep your hands off me. What's wrong with you?
You know bleedin' well what's wrong with me.
You were saying things about Sharon. You've got it wrong.
Wrong, me bollocks.
No, honestly, I swear.
Me bollocks!
# #
Another admirer of Roddy Doyle and a connoisseur of so-called
working-class language got his PhD here at Trinity College Dublin.
I know you're a big fan of Roddy Doyle and in the Barrytown Trilogy
there's 383 fucks, there's 66 bollockses, there's any number of shites,
there's a few gooters and a geebag. (LAUGHS)
I know some people criticised Roddy Doyle at the time for the way that community was represented.
I think that criticism was really wrong because it's very obviously affectionate
and it's very obviously...
I think Roddy Doyle gets denigrated mainly or under-appreciated
because it's humorous.
But it's much harder as a writer to make somebody laugh than cry.
You talk a lot about the ebullience of the way Dublin people speak.
Can you give us an example of that?
The dialect here.
I remember like "by stuttering Christ" is one that I used to hear around Dublin and it's very strange.
I don't know the etymology of that.
Disease is one of the lesser known categories of swearing.
So I think it's Italian.
They'll drop plates or something and they'll say "Cholera".
But if you ask people what's a swear word related to disease,
they won't generally know.
And then you say "poxy". We use it all the time.
It's in Shakespeare again. It's in Hamlet.
"Begin, murderer. Pox..."
And "lousy" as well.
Lousy is another one.
Lousy is one that is getting eroded.
This is the thing I suppose.
The dialect is getting eroded all time.
I think in Ireland generally we pretend that it's classless
unlike the British which is very clear class structures.
But here we pretend that that doesn't exist which is clearly untrue.
Do you think there's something in it that everyone wants to show that they're salt of the earth?
I remember as a kid you'd be walking up to school
and if you passed certain people, even if you passed girls
and you wanted to impress them,
you'd just suddenly erupt into cursing.
Just thinking the girls will love this.
Did it work?
No! Of course it didn't.
They're just going what's wrong with him?
But it's definitely a way of fostering informality and intimacy.
Informality often implies intimacy.
If you can chat freely with somebody
and you feel you're not being scrutinised, you feel a bit closer to them.
So "ah for fuck's sake".
You know that nobody's watching their ps and qs around you and it brings you closer together.
Frankie's got a point.
Our swearing is a communal thing.
It's kind of tribal.
When you trust the people around you, that's when you can really let rip.
Arse is such a good word.
Arse. It's better than ass.
You can get your tongue around it so to speak.
Arse.
It's more fun to say.
And hole. It's a good word too.
I will in me hole.
Put the two words together. Arsehole.
Got the best of both words.
Arsehole.
It's a fabulous term of abuse.
It has the advantage of being gender neutral too.
# It was Christmas Eve, babe in the drunk tank....
What constitutes bad language evolves over time.
I mean even in my lifetimes it's changed dramatically.
I think the best example of that is you take a song Fairytale of New York
where in 1987 when that song first came out, Top of the Pops were forced to censor the word arse.
Arse was considered inappropriate for prime time television.
# You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot
# Happy Christmas, your arse, I pray God it's our last...
20 years later, the big controversy was slur words which are totally unacceptable now.
Have any of you ever been standing at a pedestrian crossing when a car goes by
and in it are a bunch of lads and they lean out the window as they go by
and shout "fag" and throw a milk carton at you.
Now it doesn't really hurt.
After all it's just a wet carton and anyways they're right.
I am a fag. (chuckling)
So it doesn't hurt but it feels oppressive.
The kind of slurs that we would have bandied around the playground as kids
have become the ultimate taboo words now.
The people who are victimised by their words are reclaiming them
for themselves and you wouldn't want to use them when you realise the damage they do.
It's interesting how the k-word is much more socially acceptable than the n-word in Ireland.
So there isn't a realisation yet of how stigmatised and oppressed Travellers are.
If you grow up thinking that you're no good and if you read the papers
thinking that you're no good and they're telling you you're scum
and you go to school and you get segregated
and you get called "knacker" and "pikey" every single day,
it kills your self-esteem.
It is the most touchy subject but this kind of focus on language
rather than...
You can keep changing the language but if people are still being discriminated against
and still hated on the basis of who they are,
changing the language doesn't really address that.
For me it's a more immaterial thing.
Language doesn't change by the government imposing diktats.
It changes from the ground up.
Words like the n-word are now almost...hopefully most people know
that is a word that is simply unacceptable
and that's thanks to pushback.
That's thanks to black communities rising up against that word
and saying no, don't use it.
It's due to activism.
It's due to shaming.
It's due to...particularly now in the age of social media.
# #
I was keen to meet a high profile politician who was endured a deluge
of racist abuse on social media.
But like most Irish people, she still loves swearing herself.
A lot of people question whether I'm Irish or not
but I always laugh and say the perfect proof of how I'm Irish
is my potty mouth more than anything else.
Why do you think we swear more than others if we do?
There's no statistical evidence to say that we do but we feel that we do.
It does feel like we do.
I haven't gone through a day in this office not swearing at something!
You swore in the Mansion House.
I'm sure I'll be getting letters now. Thanks, Ardal.
If I'm conversing with the other half or my friends on the phone
there will be an element of "see you later, you gobshite".
It's that kind of friendly banter.
We are this community. We are this tribe more than anything else.
It's almost like our way of showing love and hugging someone.
Now saying that there are things I wouldn't say.
There are things that I know people would find very offensive and I draw the line at that.
You would know exactly what you should or should not go into.
Things like racial slurs or based on sexual orientation or personal appearance.
Those slurs are really taboo now in a way that they weren't even 20 years ago.
That has changed a lot. Hasn't it? Yeah...
And I guess you with your high profile career in politics,
you get a lot of that. I do.
With people who come out with racial slurs or slurs based on gender or sexuality of religion,
even in a banter environment, maybe they don't mean it
but then instead of just saying you're a terrible person for saying that,
you call them out on it and explain why.
With a racial slur it goes deep-rooted.
It actually division.
So someone calling me something like a "chink" or anything to do with my
skin colour is a massive difference than calling me a gobshite or a geebag or any of those things.
It's not rooted in something I can't change.
It comes back to the difference between language and obscenities
that are directed to you that is purposely there to cut you out.
And there are language and obscenities that are said to you
to make you part of the fold.
Language changes. Taboos change. Society changes. Ireland has changed.
I've come to Holy Cross Abbey in Tipperary,
to get a sense of the power of certain words,
and how they can lose that power over time.
The words we consider to be bad words nowadays,
a lot of them would have to do with bodily functions, and sexual acts.
We snigger at words like arse, and shit, and piss.
But of course, those words had no power hundreds of years ago,
when people did their business outside.
So there was no concept of privacy.
Even rich people didn't have a toilet.
So it wasn't until we shut the door behind us,
that we became prudish about those kind of words.
So originally,
the worst thing you could say, to offend God,
was to take God's name in vain.
Or to be blasphemous in anyway.
I mean the punishment for blasphemy, according to Leviticus and the bible,
you should be stoned to death.
Thomas Aquinas thought that blasphemy, and taking the Lord's name in vain,
was a worst crime than murder. # music #
Linguists tell us that in terms of swear words,
or the we use when we swear,
we use at the time the words that are most potent.
And you can imagine we'll say, in the Middle Ages,
in the early modern period, and even up until, you know,
the last hundred, hundred and fifty years,
the name of Jesus, and the name of saints and so on,
were considered very sacred, and had a potency.
We still kind of invoke the name of God today.
Like people will say Jesus or God, you know, in frustration.
Like is that frowned upon by the church?
There were various measures brought in to try to
emphasise the importance of the sacred name. So for instance,
in the 20th century, a Dominican called Father Finbarr Ryan
sent a letter to the Irish Independent.
Basically announcing the formation of this thing called the White Star League.
Against blasphemy, and the taking the name of Jesus in vain.
Bit like the Pioneers. Exactly like the Pioneers.
Instead of wearing a pioneer pin,
you wore a little white star on your coat lapel for instance.
# music #
What about these minced oaths then? Like obviously, golly, gosh, jeepers,
Yeah. jeeze.
Yeah, exactly so that was a way of trying to take the edge of it.
Trying to say something, but yet not being able to say the word outright.
And I mean, that's international of course.
I mean, even cripes, crikey are all to do with Christ.
Blimey, if I'm swearing falsely well let God blind me.
I actually think it's like a collection to the religion,
because... it's usually, like it's almost like a prayer to heaven.
Like you're kind of asking for divine intervention to spare you from whatever...
Or how people might even say, 'Jesus Mary and Joseph.'
And someone might even through in the donkey with it.
(laughter) Like you know, so.
Like high stakes poker.
Exactly.
There's also this idea that poets have some sort of
super natural quality, that they can actually curse.
One beautiful example is,
is from the 17th century.
And it goes as follows;
(speaks Irish)
which roughly translates as, 'May you have typhoid,
may you have hookworm, may you have swine flu, make you have bird flu,
may you have difficulty in urinating,
may you have a breast ulcer, (laughs)
may you have scurvy.'
(speaks Irish) 'May you have liver disease.'
Now, when he's finished with ya, with that...
It beats, 'You're only a bollox.'
Exactly... (laughter)
The language, unbelievable! Feck this and feck that.
Yes Mrs Doyle. Ya big bastard,
oh dreadful language. Ya big hairy arse, ya big fecker. Fierce stuff.
And of course,
the F word, Father.
The bad F word.
Worse than feck, you know the one I mean.
Yes I do Mrs Doyle.
Eff you. Eff your effin' wife.
Oh, I dunno why they have to use language like that.
I'll stick this effin' pitch fork up your hole.
Oh that was another one, oh yes.
I see what you mean, Mrs Doyle. Bastard this and bastard that.
You can't move for the bastards in her novels.
It's wall to wall bastards.
Is it Mrs Doyle? Ya bastard.
Anyway. Ya fecker, ya bollox.
Get your bollox out of my face...
(birds chirping)
Bollocks is a very versatile word, and it's clearly an English word,
but in Ireland we use it in unique ways. For example,
we will use it as a descriptive noun to describe someone
who's being very irritating.
Like if there's a tall person sitting in front of you in the cinema,
you go, 'Lanky bollocks.'
You know, he's not a bad person but he's in your way.
An idler is a lazy bollocks.
Your boss is probably a contrary little bollocks.
If somebody asked you to do something unreasonable,
you'll go, 'Ask me bollocks.'
(laughter)
What happened, what was the story behind that clip?
Here's the story behind that clip. Come on Shane.
I busted my bollocks to get here... (laughter)
And to see that clip, ya can shove it up your fuckin' hole.
(laughter)
# music #
Dry shite. There's a unique Irish swear word.
It sounds very mild and innocent on the surface.
'Cause actually the worse thing you can be called in Ireland,
a dry shite.
Not only are you dry and boring, no craic.
When you're called out as a dry shite, usually by a very good friend,
who's only got your best interest at heart,
you have to take a good look at yourself.
The very least, you might have to change you plans for the evening.
Because, not only are you a bit boring,
and your letting yourself down,
given the emphasis on the craic in this country,
you're sort of letting the country down as well.
# music #
At the paper of record, I met a man who write eloquently,
about our unique Irish way with the bitter word.
I remember be very tickled by something you wrote about,
like the hierarchy of terms of abuse.
We have advancing layers of dishonour.
The general entry level is to be an eejit of some kind.
'Cause there's something about eejit.
it's a common term of abuse,
but it's almost sympathetic.
You know, you start of, 'Ah he's a harmless eejit.
He can't help himself.'
'He's a big eejit.' You know,
he's getting on the way towards earning culpability
but he's not quite there yet.
'He's the two ends of an eejit.'
That's borderline.
The next level would be to be a fecker of some kind, you know,
'That auld fecker.' That implies a certain malicious intent.
And then beyond that, you might go onto something like gobshite,
which means all sorts of things,
but it does definitely mean you're definitely contributing to the situation.
It's not something that you're born into.
It's still semi affectionate though. Yeah, you could.
You don't hate a gobshite. You could be an innocent gobshite.
And at number 15 for the 16th week in a row, it's Father Jack Hackett.
With I'm A Sleepy Priest.
How did that gobshite get on the television?
And fecker as well. I love feck and fecker.
Because there really is no edge to that.
It's funny how we successfully, largely through Father Ted,
we have smuggled that into polite, or at least semi...
no, it's almost polite English usage now.
You still can't say in most parts of polite British society,
you can't say fuck.
But you can say feck now, it's a joke. It's licensed by a priest.
It's funny, isn't it? Like, and you can use it in every circumstance.
So it's a real catch-all mild swear word.
Fecker is definitely,
for whatever reason, it's definitely divorced from the sexual act,
which was the basis for the other word.
# music #
Now, the Irish times, like every other news organ in the country,
would have censored bad language, you know.
You never read a bad word in a newspaper.
As far as I know,
the word pregnant was never used in a newspaper until 1960,
believe it or not, in this country.
I think it formally is, it's not a house rule as such,
but from observation I've noticed,
we seem to have a maximum 3 asterix rule in words.
It has the em... appearance of propriety and decorum,
but we're leaving readers in no doubt as to what the words are.
It's totally redundant.
We're just leaving it up to their dirty minds.
There may be a few innocent or very well brought up Irish Times readers
who still look at the effing c and think,
'Why was that person describing somebody as a fucking Celt?'
I dunno!
Well, you can see the level expectancy... ..the fuckin' ball.
Eamon. You can see the level of expectancy.
Oh yeah. (laughs)
When Neymar was shaping up to take that penalty,
I thought he was fucking... (gasps) ..dreading.
Sorry, we're not on air? We're on air.
Oh... we're not, are we? We are.
Everyone doubted us from the start of the year.
We proved our doubters wrong tonight.
We're champions of fuckin' Ireland!
(cheering)
# music #
I still haven't quite decided if it's a matter of national pride, or shame.
But there's no doubt that our love of swearing is never more evident
than when we're supposed to be out there enjoying ourselves.
Ah for fuck's sake, ref! Get a grip.
And the referee this afternoon has come all the way down from Monaghan.
Pat McEnaney. (whistle)
Pat, you would have refereed at every age group
and in every kind of competition, right up to All Ireland level.
You must have heard it all.
Yeah. The language varied.
The language varied, and eh... I can tell ya,
it wasn't all complimentary.
Come on lads, come on. Ah fuck ya Pat.
It's kind of ritualistic, isn't it? Like you are a pantomime villain.
Absolutely. Out there, aren't ya?
Like, the referee is the lightning rod for all sorts of frustration.
I used to reckon people used to come to football matches
sometimes to get their frustration out.
And they seen this lad in a black suit, and it was a target.
But you're right, it was part of the language like.
You know, 'What the fuck are ya at, ref?'
That was a normal enough statement like.
And it was kind of accepted, you know, the word 'Fuck'.
(shouting, cursing in background)
We'll have to fuckin' keep a tight reign here.
You know, what's acceptable? I always say as a referee, you know,
a fella come running up, and he's frustrated.
Maybe he's after you know, missing mistimed tackle.
And he might go, 'What the fuck are you at, Pat like?
What's going on here?'
That's acceptable conversation on a football field.
Come on man, get up. Get up, get up.
Come on.
But when someone goes, 'Fuck you, McEnaney.'
That's a straight red card, Right.
Where it's personal.
But as a referee, you need to understand that line.
Yeah, you know what I mean, you need to know when a player is frustrated,
when he's not actually directing that verbal at ya.
It was when you went beyond that, like the word bastard,
like when you use that word on a football field,
that's not acceptable.
Let's say there's a bit of smozz and I blow the whistle,
and I'm standing here, right?
And you're closer,
fuckin' in like a shot.
Do you know, when you're the man that's dictating the level of tolerance of language,
of the game. Probably with me,
I was more concise about the language then you use like.
Sean Casey going in there. Oh, they're all at it in there now.
This is absolutely disgraceful.
The minute you use the word fuck as a referee
on a football pitch to dictate to a player,
you've lost it. Yeah, yeah.
You've lost it.
But you're always fighting that battle, and you're always, you know,
the language barrier, the discipline, the respect,
you always have to keep putting it out there. Yeah, yeah.
Otherwise it gets lost.
(whistle)
(cheers) And the referee whistles,
and it's all over.
Fuck.
Lalochezia keys is the technical term for the use of expletives
to relieve stress or pain.
So when you hit your thumb with a hammer,
or dive into the Irish Sea on Christmas Day,
swearing is nature's painkiller.
What is happening to us physiologically and neurologically
and psychologically I guess, when we swear?
There's some really nice research that shows that when we hear
swearing or when we use it, our heart rates go up.
Something called the Galvanic Skin response, that feeling of slightly
sweaty palms, goes up whenever we hear something
as emotive as swearing.
For most of us, the left hemisphere of the brain does
most of our speaking for us.
But you can lose the entire left hemisphere of your brain and survive
and you'll lose pretty much all your language apart from your swearing.
Tell me, do men swear more than women? Is that a thing?
No. Part of this is to do with the fact that women tend to be more
reserved in their swearing around men.
You may not believe this but it's true.
The early studies that looked at whether or not women were
using profanity, it was largely male researchers asking young women
if they knew what these naughty words meant.
Of course these young women went 'no, never heard of them'.
Whereas when women started doing the research, there was a degree more honesty.
But do women swear in a different way when they're amongst themselves?
Yeah. What tends to happen is that swearing evolves over generations
anyway, as things become more or less taboo in society.
But men's swearing tends to follow a pattern such that as soon as women
start using a word, it tends to start to fall out of men's vocabulary.
It's almost as if it's seen as softer because women have started using it.
So the more swear word women claim, the more new stronger words
men tend to go for.
So for example, now women have started saying 'fuck' a lot,
male swearing has moved slightly more into using the word 'cunt'.
I remember for me growing up in the 90's,
the idea of calling my male friends cunts or twats, was second nature to me.
We at least need to arrange a time where.. You can email me.
Okay. So when... Just email me.
Okay.
Is your email address still impatient-shithead-at-meme-dot-jerk!
Yeah. Yeah it is.
Is your still fat-idiot-at-badbreath-dot-cunt?
There is a weird generational shift in that as well.
If I say that around younger women, largely because of the amount of
gender based abuse a lot of them have faced on the internet,
those words now have a much stronger impact than they used to.
So that's the only set of swearing I think that was embraced by women
but has then gone back to being predominantly used by men.
We have internalised this idea that as much as women do swear,
it's somehow slightly less acceptable.
To which I can only say fuck that!
(Ardal laughs)
Hear hear.
Watch your language.
What did I say?
You said prick.
But that's not a bad word.
Yes it is.
Is prick a bad word? (I dunno)
Yes it is, and stop saying it.
Shit and fuck are bad words but it's just a bit of fun.
Prick is just as bad as shit and fuck.
You're not allowed say any of them. What about cunt?
What?
I'm reluctant to use certain words.
Like the C word for example. I...
I wouldn't say that on stage.
I probably wouldn't say it even in a TV programme about bad language.
I wouldn't say it in public,
unless I was with very close friends who I could trust.
I wouldn't say it at home. Certainly not in front of my daughters.
They hate that word.
I think what attracts people to the word is the phonetics.
It's the harsh sound.
It sounds vicious.
A good linguist will tell you, in purely technical terms, why it is so effective.
What you have is the voiceless velar plosive followed by
shortback vowel, and then you end up with the alveolar plosive.
I mean we all know that.
To me, it was like this is a word that you use for mischievous men
more than anything else.
Ah he's some... You know.
It never really occurred to me that this is a very offensive word.
As a good feminist, you should never use this word.
But I suppose of all of the swear words, that would be the one
I'd be most conscious about using.
You'd kind of look around first to make sure, am I gonna...
I don't want to get a lecture on this.
I understand why people are made uncomfortable by it.
It'd be definitely a word I'd be very careful with.
Not because I'm a man and because it's a word that's contested nowadays.
It's just a word that you reserve for special people and
special circumstances.
It's when fucker won't do or when bollocks won't do
or bastard won't do.
There's one more word left.
That's true to a degree but I think there's nothing in Ireland quite as hurtful.
I would be called that any day of the week before being called a clone. (laughs)
Or a spanner or something like...
There's something so mean about it.
Like you're not even worth swearing at, you tulip.
The 19th Century writer, William Carlton, celebrated our cursing habit.
He said "Every oath is epic. Full of humour, pathos
and the highest order of invention and talent".
Perhaps one reason why we're so adept at swearing in English,
is because we were so fucking good at it in our native tongue.
Do you know any...? Tell us a few curses in Irish.
Will I? Yes.
Go on, tell us a few curses in Irish. I wonder..
Go on, do it. Alright.
A bhastard.
Say it after me.
A bhastard!
Yes. (audience laughs)
That's what she said!
There's a difference between the conventional effing and blinding
that we do today, and heaping curses on people.
Wishing them misfortune.
What ties them together I suppose, is they're both trying to cause dishonour.
How do you really want to ruin someone's honour?
You wanna bring the darkness down on them.
You wanna say go deibh an diabhail go dti do haimn.
May the devil get into your soul.
Or bascadh na muice ar fhail na mbruch thugat.
So bascadh, the bashing of the muice, of the goats...
ar fhial na mbruch. At the bottom of the cliff of the badgers.
So basically when the goats had chased the badgers over the cliff,
and ended up dead on the bottom.
May that happen to you.
Ta an tonn teasca chughat.
A continual wave of vomiting onto you, out of your mouth. Wow.
You're not coming back from any of those. No.
So we didn't have words in the Irish language then,
like crude taboo words for like bodily functions and
intimate body parts? They weren't taboo words?
There's a few like chluaibh ar do...
which is basically may you animal hide on your anus.
Our just fur on you bum. Fair enough.
But that's as far as it's going to get.
The thing is though, that Irish people are just far more emotional.
We include emotion in our culture. It's there every moment.
People wake up going OH GOD!
What time is it? It's 6 minutes to 9.
Is it? I thought it was only 7 minutes to. We're all fucked.
I don't want to get into this thing about Irish exceptionalism or anything
but like... I do really!
In the way we identify as sort of being drinking and great craic.
Like swearing is part of that way we self-identify.
Yeah, like as you said, I too like to avoid exceptionalism
but you can say it with the...
The English that the Irish speakers speak, of all the English
speakers around the world, has more cursing in it.
We think of Brendan Behan. We think of Bob Geldof.
We just think of cursing so as you say, there is definitely something there.
There's also this poetic sensibility.
We love created... It wasn't just a curse that insulted you.
It was a curse that was as elegant and as compact as possible
and that put the knife in, turned it, got out again.
I respected your sincerity. I'd ask you respect mine.
> You don't seem very sincere.
Well all due respect, in the most unparliamentary language,
f**k you Deputy Stagg F**k you.
I apologise now for my use of unparliamentary language.
I think I'll have another glass of Fanta 'cause I love Fanta so much.
(fizzes and spills) Oh fuck.
Swearing on television can still be a surprise on occasions,
but is rarely shocking.
The very first person to cause such a stir on Irish tv was
Christy Brown on The Late Late Show in 1970,
when he said "Fuck 'em and double fuck 'em".
But perhaps the poet laureate of Irish swearing is an
honorary knight of the British realm.
A lot of detractors saying look at all those people in that room.
A lot of wealthy people.
If they all paid their taxes in the right way, we wouldn't
need these kind of fundraising singles. What do you say to them?
I think they're talking bollocks.
Pretty colourful language. If you could not use any more we'd appreciate it.
You're a prominent Irish person in Britain, who swears a lot,
or at least you have the reputation for swearing a lot.
Do you think Irish people get away with it more then
in somewhere like England?
I think the English has appropriated a lot of the Irishisms.
Like shite etc., is relatively normal now.
A lot of it is to do with the fact that there's this misconception
that if you swear, you're thick or you don't have the vocabulary
to be able to express yourself properly.
In fact the opposite is true, as countless studies have said.
You're more likely to swear if you've got a large vocabulary
and I think that goes to why perhaps, the Irish swear more.
So it kind of raises the question, what are we missing in Ireland
that we swear so much?
Everyone has their frustrations but are we more frustrated?
Are we more emotionally repressed than other people?
It's all of that but it's the fact of the...
the sound of language.
Words have got a tangible, physical quality to them.
That's genuinely true.
There's the weighted word.
And the context of the flow of a sentence in Ireland,
has got a rhythmic and melodic quality to it.
Unsurprising that you use then, swear words,
because they do come from a place where music comes from in the brain.
And that's a really odd fact and it's extraordinary.
So perhaps there's a mellifluous quality that you insert the word where it's apt.
And what was your excuse for swearing live on British television in 1985
and shocking, shocking the nation?
What happened was I was up in the box with Charles and Diana,
so I'd done that thing.
Quo came on. It kicked off. Okay, it was all going.
And now the next part once the gig was actually on,
was trying to get as much money and remind people what all these
giants of the culture were doing it for free.
And that wasn't happening.
I went to the broadcast booth and this DJ,
'Hey everybody'.. charity and all this stuff,
was crapping on about envelopes and posting it.
And I said fuck the envelopes.
Call up now and do it.
You've gotta get on the phone and take the money out of your pocket.
Don't go to the pub tonight, please.
Stay in and give us the money. There are people dying NOW!
So gimme the money. Here's the numbers.
We're gonna get the address first.. No. No, fuck the address.
Let's get the numbers.
'Cause that's how we're gonna get it.
The swear word had the effect of slapping someone across the face
and saying wake up.
You've got to join in.
I think that... suddenly went, fuck yeah.
And that's the point where literally the...
...quite literally phone lines collapsed.
So that should answer anyone who thinks there's no place for swearing.
Obviously... It depends on the context, Ardal.
Ultimately there are very few taboos left in our everyday language.
But it's important that there are some.
That there is a line.
Cursing and swearing is all very well when it binds us together,
but not so great when it's divisive.
Swearing is about the forbidden.
They're words of power.
The power comes from that which is taboo.
Sweet mother of holy divine fuck.
Things like that..
What does that even mean? It doesn't matter but...
It doesn't need to mean anything.
There are words that were in nursery rhymes or the titles
of Agatha Christie novels that now I can't even bring myself
to utter, because I'm much more aware of the freight of pain
that some words bear.
It's very hard to use those in a positive and inclusive way.
They are usually used as ways of demeaning people.
So I really hope that we can hold onto particularly things like
fuck and shit, 'cause either way,
we're all basically the result of a fuck or something like it
and everybody shits.
There are journalists, politicians, there are pop stars,
apologising because of this fear of saying the wrong thing.
This fear of...
...of the pack turning on you.
And one of the words that's left is fuck.
We can still say fuck.
Thank fuck we can still say fuck.
We swear for the same reasons that everyone else does.
To let off steam, to convey strong emotions,
to add emphasis and colour to our conversation.
To shock, to wound, to amuse.
But I think there's more to it. I think part if it is that we're
just a little bit histrionic by nature.
We exaggerate a lot. We magnify our grievances.
We're well versed in the art of begrudgery.
We're just very argumentative.
We've a lot to say.
In fact, I'm surprised we don't swear a lot more.
It's been really interesting and I think you've covered
pretty much everything there so it's fantastic. Thank you.
Well go and fuck yourself, Ardal!
I will.