A

ANTHONY AINLEY

In The King's Demons, a bland and insipid two-part Doctor Who story, this saturnine featured actor utters a phrase which sounds suspiciously like "Doctor, your willy's weak."

B

CHRIS BARRIE

Although he didn't actually swear, Chris Barrie did disgrace himself and embarrass the presenters whilst appearing on the BBC children's programme, The 8.15 From Manchester. During a live interview with Charlotte Hindle, the star of Red Dwarf and The Brittas Empire said that performing on stage was like "having an orgasm", a remark entirely inappropriate for the programme's timeslot.

TOM BAKER

C

BERNARD CRIBBENS

In Bernard Cribbens' epoch-making hit single "Right Said Fred", an amusing tale of the troubles faced by removal men, he sings the line: "With a rope or two we could knock the bludder through". Critics have long been puzzled as to the identity of a "bludder". Is it slang in the removal trade? Is it another name for a piano, the item the men in the song are trying to move? Or, even more bizarrely, is it a swearword in a different language? The safest bet seems to be that "bludder" is simply a deliberately slurred pronunciation of "bugger", done so to prevent the tender ears of the nations children in a song by one of its best known family entertainers.

D

JASON DONOVAN

Before the days of the diabolical The End Of The Year Show, the BBC's New Years Eve programme was a similar programme hosted by Clive James. Although occasionally featuring some memorable jokes , it always descended into schmaltz by about 11.55pm, when the 'man of the year' or 'woman of the year' voted by James would join the host for a rendition of "Auld Lang Syne". Amongst other noted vocal luminaries who won the coveted award during the 1990s such as Tom Jones and Luciano Pavarotti, former star of Joseph And His Amazing Technical Dreamcoat Jason Donovan also was decorated in this manner. Unfortunately, he disgraced his arrival on the show by calling Clive a "bastard", claiming his fellow countryman had told him a different location for the programme. It transpired almost immediately that it was a good-natured insult, and that Donovan was probably a little 'high' at the time.

E

GEOFF EMERICK

The Beatles' most talented engineer, who started working with the band in 1966, and had a happy time with them until 1968, when he quit due to the rapidly worsening atmosphere within the band. Although very little available documentation confirms this, there was a vast amount of swearing going on, as Geoff recalled in 1988:

FLASH GORDON

The film version of this comic book legend was, for many, the worst film of all time, although any film casting Blue Peter's Peter Duncan in a minor role stands very little chance of success.

The acting was absolutely diabolical - Sam J. Jones was so atrocious in the title role that his lines had to be re-recorded by somebody else, Max Von Sydow and Timothy Dalton developed their ham-bones to absurd degrees and Brian Blessed was so far over the top it was painful to watch. With an endless stream of lovelies parading around shamelessly, a bombastic soundtrack by Queen and woeful special effects, Flash Gordon has certainly earned its regular place in ITV's Boxing Day schedule, albeit in an edited form, and it is a couple of these edited sections that concern us in here.

As well as the scene where Flash inadvertently says "Oh my god, this girl is really turning me on!" telepathically, there’s the profane oral acrobatics of Timothy Dalton – “Lying bitch!”, “That damned woman is using me again”, and “Freeze, you bloody bastards.” Of course, Dalton used his linguistic experiences on Flash Gordon to great effect in his brief career as James Bond, particularly in his second and final appearance, Licence To Kill, in which he enlivened 007’s usual vocal output with phrases like “You could have bloody well got yourself killed”, “Watch the birdie… you bastard”, and in a particularly tense scene, “Piss off”.

G

TOM GOOD

Expertly portrayed by Richard Briers in The Good Life, the laugh-a-minute situation comedy of the Seventies, Tom is one of the best known residents of Surbiton, along with his wife Barbara (Felicity Kendal), and neighbours Jerry and Margot Leadbetter (Paul Eddington and Penelope Keith). To the Leadbetters' consternation, the Goods were excessively ecologically sound, eating only home-grown vegetables and keeping numerous animals in the back garden, with hilarious consequences. In one side splitting scene, he attempts to persuade a cock to mate with a hen with no success. Confused, he speculates, "Perhaps he's a queer."

H

GEORGE HARRISON

In one of the 1995/6 documentary series about the Beatles, The Beatles Anthology, guitarist George Harrison attempted to explain the genesis of the Fab Four's doomed television film, Magical Mystery Tour, by describing trips to the seaside, where a group of people would get on the bus and get "pissed". He qualified this by saying, "That's pissed in the English sense", presumably so he didn't confuse, or even offend the American audience.

I

INDEPENDENT TELEVISION NEWS

After an interview with Independent Television News (ITN) in 1994, the Prime Minister John Major launched an off-the-record attack on the Euro-sceptics in the Conservative party, calling them "bastards". Unfortunately, the camera was still rolling and a pirate copy of the tape was circulated to all the relevant tabloids, causing a great scandal that in the great post-Watergate tradition of British newspapers became known as Bastardgate.

J

TOM JONES

The "big voiced-boyo from the valleys" has performed a plethora of roles across the media world from hugely popular rock singer to television presenter , but until recently he had never pointed his legendary pelvis in the direction of acting. However, that all changed when director Tim Burton invited him to appear in his recent science fiction satire, Mars Attacks. Playing himself, Tom is seen singing his best known tune, "It's Not Unusual" in front of an audience of thousands of adoring fans. Tom is seen exercising his well-worn tonsils in the best manner, when suddenly behind him the band stops playing. Looking round, he realises all his backing singers have turned into aliens. With true class, he exclaims, "Jesus Christ!"

K

CAPTAIN JAMES TIBERIUS KIRK

Unlike his first officer, Mr. Spock (see Leonard Nimoy), Captain Kirk has often had to call up his vast repertoire of bad language to get the crew of the USS Enterprise out of trouble. Expertly enunciated by William Shatner, lines such as "Klingon bastard, you killed my son!", "Double dumb ass on you", "No Mam, no dip-shit" and "I ought to knock you in your godamn ass", maintained Star Trek's status as an extremely important cultural phenomenon.

L

TONY LEWIS

The former Glamorgan and England batsman found the transition from playing cricket to appearing on camera discussing the sport a little overwhelming, and television critics described him in his early appearances as seeming to have a "ferret down his trousers". Perhaps this explains why in 1993 he became flustered when the camera cut to him unexpectedly and said, "Oh, for fuck's sake."

After a flood of complaints jammed the BBC switchboard, he retracted his comment by announcing to the viewers, "I apologise for my earlier off-the-cuff remark."

M

RICHARD MADELEY

The suave co-host of This Morning has had several embarrassing incidents including almost being prosecuted during his tenure as doyen of ITV's weekday morning schedule, and his language has also been suspect at times. The most recent occasion came after their recent relocation to London, during an interview with alternative comedian David Baddiel. During a discussion about the public perception of Baddiel as a "lad", Madeley commented, "I bet it really pisses you off". He was later forced to make an on-air apology for his remark.

N

LEONARD NIMOY

Because the character he portrayed in Star Trek, Mr. Spock, was only half-human, swearing is one thing Leonard Nimoy has been rarely called to use during his long acting and musical career. However, in the film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the Enterprise crew go into 'time warp', ending up in 1980s America looking for hump-back whales, and Spock must attempt to blend in with the highly illogical human race. To do this, he attempts to use mild profanity, or 'colourful metaphors'. Unfortunately, his inappropriate use of phrases such as "The hell they did" and "One damn minute, Admiral" caused much confusion, and eventually Kirk had to take him to one side to try and stop him.

O

ONE FM

For a brief period in 1994, BBC Radio One attempted to revamp itself by changing its name to One FM, something they saw as detaching themselves from the staid, conventionalism of the other BBC stations. Sadly, as Radio One was staid and conventional as well, it was doomed to failure, but before the name reverted to a compromise name, Radio One FM, a tragic incident occurred during the Top Forty programme. DJ and compere Bruno Brookes picked up a CD and put on a new entry in the chart, "Killing In The Name" by Rage Against The Machine. Unfortunately, Brookes was unaware of the coda of the song, and was stunned to hear, blasting out across the airwaves to millions of listeners, the repeated phrase "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me". Unsurprisingly, there were an avalanche of complaints, although none of those complaining suggested that Mark Goodier should be brought back to present the programme.

P

NICHOLAS PARSONS

Actor, comedy straight man and host of Just A Minute, Nicholas was conned into reading a special coded message on camera by the satirical current affairs programme, Brass Eye, thinking it was a passionate and dignified poem by Desmond Morris. When the footage was re-edited, Nicholas appeared to say: "Aren't we all a bunch of fuckwits? An elephant could no more stick its trunk up its arse than we could lick our balls."

Q

Q

Desmond Lewellyn, the elderly actor who plays Q in the James Bond films, has often complained of having trouble remembering his character's lines, particularly the lengthy technical explanations of Bond's high-tech gadgetry. In one film during the Roger Moore era, Lewellyn was just reaching the end of a near-perfect rendition, when Moore held a sign up off camera reading, "Bollocks", causing Lewellyn to corpse and fluff the end of the speech.

R

LOU REED

Rock singer Lou Reed is certainly no stranger to the use of obscene language, but in a 1995 appearance on the Channel Four live music programme, The White Room, he surpassed himself. In a version of his most well-known song, "Walk On The Wild Side", Reed improvised several lines including "Louder, Chris", "Play guitar, Dave" and, most shocking of all, "You should've seen the motherfucker go go go", to the delight of all watching.

S

THE SMITHS

Despite his serene, vegetarian lifestyle at the time, Morrissey's lyrics for the Smiths in the mid-Eighties took a disturbing turn by including several profanities. Thousands of angst-ridden bed-sit dwellers were aghast to hear words like "bastards" ("The Headmaster Ritual"), "whore" ("Cemetery Gates"), "bloody" and "arse" (both "Frankly Mr. Shankly") on a Smiths disc, but were unprepared for the final insult on the Smiths' last studio album, Strangeways Here We Come. Backed up by Johnny Marr's playful sound effects, Morrissey gives the song "Death At One's Elbow" an added drop of spice with the tragically inappropriate admission, "It's crap, I know". Fortunately, by the time this line was heard by the public, the Smiths had ceased to exist.

T

GRAHAM TAYLOR

The former manager of the England football team, who failed to get them into the 1994 World Cup due to his crass team selection, bad coaching skills and turnip shaped head. However, Taylor's embarrassment was compounded by a documentary about his tenure, which included footage of him during one of England's matches, using a plethora of swearwords, including liberal use of the word "fuck". Sadly, his swearing antics were forgotten in the light of his famously incomprehensible phrase, "Do I not like that?"

U

UNITED NATIONS INTELLIGENCE TASKFORCE

During the early part of the 1970s, Doctor Who was set almost entirely on a near contemporary planet Earth, with the good Doctor (Jon Pertwee) working with a military Taskforce created to prevent the Planet Earth being invaded. Led by Brigadier Alastair Gordon Lethbridge Stewart (Nicholas Courtney), the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT) fought many horrifying battles against the Silurians, the Daleks, Dinosaurs and regularly tussled with the renegade Time Lord the Master. Many fans of the series have praised this era as one of the most realistic in the programme's history, particularly the gritty realism of the UNIT troops. However, any realism created in this era was instantly eradicated by the language, which due to the fact that Doctor Who was still ostensibly a children's programme, was always very mild - the only rude outburst by a UNIT soldier was "Holy Moses!", although several years later Jon Pertwee did later use the expletive, "Jehosophat!"

V

DICK VAN DYKE

Miserably untalented American actor and dancer, Dick is included here because of the two amusingly rude words in his name, and for his diabolical English accent in Mary Poppins, and the unfortunately named Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. A generation of children grew up corrupted by this man.

W

PENELOPE WILTON

In the suburban 1980s situation comedy, Ever Decreasing Circles, classically trained actress Penelope Wilton was the ideal foil for Richard Briers' fastidious Martyn Bryce character. In the role of his wife Anne, she was constantly irritated and harassed by his behaviour, leading to a flirtation with their suave neighbour, Paul (Peter Egan). Due to the programme's timeslot, the scriptwriters were unable to give Anne real swearwords to describe her feelings, so they invented a perennial joke for the series - every time she felt the urge to swear, she simply said, "Oh.....Bolsheviks!"

X

XEREPHAS

Due to the overspending of the special effects budget on creating a hugely realistic giant snake for the story Kinda, and obtaining the performing rights to some 1920s songs for Black Orchid, the Doctor Who production team for Season 19 realised that for their final story of the season, they would have to cut back on costs. To do this, they commissioned a story involving a Concorde disappearing through a rift in the fabric of space and time and crash landing on an alien planet, Xerephas, which was home to several hundreds of horrifying aliens, the Xeraphins. To expect anything remotely credible from a brief that a Hollywood budget could barely manage is beyond most people, yet Time Flight is always more terrifyingly abysmal than you expect. Now doesn't that make you want to swear?

Y

SIR KENNETH YELLOW-HAMMER

Multi-millionaire tycoon and owner of satellite television channel KYTV (Formerly KYTV and BSE TV), Sir Kenneth Yellow-Hammer is the much loved eccentric figure who gave a whole new dimension to broadcasting. During a celebration of KY's programming, he discussed with Anna Daptor the moral boundaries of KYTV, and explained exactly what could and couldn't be said. There was an unfortunate mishap towards the end of the interview, where after reeling off a list of swearwords, Anna said "Shag?", to which Sir Kenneth misunderstood and replied, "I won't, bless you, my wife is expecting me."

Z

ZENITH PRODUCTIONS