When I was growing up the words 'spastic' and 'spaz' (more commonly pronounced 'spa' with a kind of glottal stop at the end) were part of our rich palette of insults. Even back then they were mildly frowned upon.

Slightly surprising, then, to hear Tiger Woods liken himself to a 'spaz' the other day, not least because I'd thought this was a uniquely British pejorative and because it seems to breach some of the notions of political correctness that Americans hold very dear.

In the Guardian meanwhile, John Harris is complaining about the current vogue for sneering at chavs. His complaint is not so much about the word itself but of the contempt it implies for working-class people generally. Others argue that 'chav' isn't a class insult at all but really describes a particular type of vulgar, threatening, selfish behaviour that the 'decent' working classes find as abhorrent as the rest of us.

I think Harris is right. Chav has replaced terms like nouveau riche and counter-jumper as ways of putting down members of the working class who get their hands on a bit of cash (or act as if they have). They may have money, is the message (spoken or unspoken) but that can't buy taste...

Being poor in Britain these days is viewed as a moral failing but getting ideas above your station is far, far worse.

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Interesting item on BBC2's about the limited availability of Tamiflu, the anti-bird flu drug. Rich countries are likely to buy up the bulk of the stocks, leaving little for the Third World, the programme pointed out, suggesting that the developed world had a duty to behave altruistically in this matter.

Fair enough but Newsnight could also have pointed out that in the UK Tamiflu will go first not to the sick and elderly but to 'key workers' who include BBC employees. No doubt the Newsnight team can be relied on to hand their supplies to more deserving cases.

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Props, maximum respect, a big shout out etc to Guido Fawkes who devised an innovative way of gaining support when he wanted to break an injunction taken out by Rupert Murdoch. Guido used pledgebank to promise publicly that he would publish a picture of the News of the World's Fake Sheikh provided ten other bloggers did the same.

There is safety (of a sort) in numbers and we can expect to see this mechanism used in future cases to subvert injunctions, D-notices and so on - and possibly not always in support of causes as self-evidently correct as Guido's.

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The BBC's trial of its Integrated Media Player (iMP) has been a success, apparently. Families with the player watched an average of two programmes a week on their computers, rather than on TV.

No launch date yet as the iMP has to be analysed by Ofcom to see what effect it will have on the internet market. At a time when a lot of companies (including the one I work for) are looking at ways of making money out of video, either by charging or by advertising, the BBC's plans to offer its programmes free of charge will have a big impact.

The BBC is hoping to have its entire broadcast output on the player - including feature films (and think what that is likely to mean for the nascent businesses offering films on download to your PC for a fee).

The BBC has had to negotiate hard with rights holders and the current agreement is that programmes will be available for a week after broadcast. But this is likely to frustrate viewers used to the video/Tivo environment in which you can record shows and watch them whenever you want. How frustrating to find that the key episode of your favourite show that you thought you had saved has vanished from your computer because you were a bit tardy in watching it. What use is a mere week's grace when you are on holiday for a fortnight?

Long term it's hard to imagine that the seven-day stipulation will survive. On the other hand, what would a world look like in which valuable TV programmes and films were available to anybody, at any time, free of charge?

Some web idealists claim this would be a paradise, a new golden age of artistic and intellectual freedom. They may be right to argue that digital technology will soon make copyright meaningless. But what then? People and businesses that make TV programmes, films and music - including the BBC - need to make money out of their labour. Otherwise they won't bother.

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David Cameron is doing his best to make the Conservative Party hip, cool and metropolitan. This description of the birthday party of a senior Tory figure shows just how much he still has to do:

"Jasper Carrott compered the whole evening, one highlight of which was an hilarious tour de force by William Hague. We were also treated to John Culshaw from Dead Ringers, Lulu (who I've never really liked, but she was superb!), the Band of the Scots Guards and to round it off Tom Jones performed seven or eight of his hits - not a dry seat in the house"

[Explanatory note: The party was in honour of Michael Ashcroft, a rich businessman who has kept the Tories solvent, more or les single-handedly. The grateful guest is a former Tory parliamentary candidate]

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In today's Daily Mail, Leo McKinstry attacks the strike by local government workers, taking particular issue with the union's evocation of the spirit of the 1926 General Strike. "Eighty years ago" he writes " the working class were facing real physical hardship. The coal miners...were battling against savage wage cuts and longer hours."

The Mail is of course correct to take a sympathetic view of the 1926 strikers. A shame that the paper could not find space to mention the role played in the strike by the Zinoviev letter of 1924, that purported to show that Russian Communists were organising and agitating in Britain. The letter terrified the middle classes and helped to harden attitudes against the working classes and the suffering miners. It was, of course a politically motivated forgery and published in the Daily Mail.

Also missing from McKinstry's article was a discussion of the immediate cause of the General Strike - a dispute involving printers at a newspaper which wished to run a leader denouncing the miners as a 'revolutionary movement'. The name of the paper? The Daily Mail.

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SUPPORT NEIL NUNES
So Radio 4 has hired a continuity announcer with a Jamaican accent and Middle Britain - or parts of it - is not too happy. Listeners with names like Christopher Robins and Timmy Wren have been visiting the BBC's site to say things like "The tones, modulation and pronunciation are just very uncomfortable for Radio 4," and "His voice was American-ish but grating, difficult to understand and not at all pleasant to listen to," and "A hard-edged American note also enters the mix from time to time. I suspect Caribbean origins".

Only Timmy, Christopher and their chums can tell us why they find a Jamaican accent so objectionable but I hope the BBC reacts appropriately - perhaps by giving Neil his own show, preferably at prime time.

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THE DANGERS OF MISSPEAKING
"An American radio station has sacked a talkshow host who used a racial slur to describe the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice." according to Media Guardian (registration required).

Really? Well, not quite, as the story goes on to make clear. In fact the presenter was commenting favourably on Rice's stated desire to one day run the NFL when he said this:

"She's got the patent resumé of somebody that has serious skill. She loves football, she's African-American, which would be kind of a big coon," said Mr Lenihan. "Oh my God - I totally, totally, totally, totally am sorry for that. I didn't mean that." He later told a local television news channel he had meant to say "coup".

An inexcusable racial slur, said his boss who fired him on the spot. Pretty tough, you might think, for what was seemingly an unfortunate slip of the tongue. I suppose it's just about possible - and you would only be able to tell by listening to the broadcast - he genuinely was making an unpleasant racist joke but to judge from the report, it was simply a mistake.

A few years ago a Washington public official was forced to resign after his use of the word 'niggardly' was incorrectly taken as a racially offensive epithet. I believe he eventually got his job back so there may yet be hope for Lenihan.

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CALL OFF THE SEARCH....
Shave 'em dry by Lucille Bogan recorded around 1934

"I got nipples on my titties, big as the end of my thumb,I got somethin' between my legs'll make a dead man come,Oh daddy, baby won't you shave 'em dry?
Aside: Now, draw it out!
Want you to grind me baby, grind me until I cry.
(Roland: Uh, huh.)
Say I fucked all night, and all the night before baby,And I feel just like I wanna, fuck some more,Oh great God daddy,
(Roland: Say you gonna get it. You need it.)
Grind me honey and shave me dry,And when you hear me holler baby, want you to shave it dry.I got nipples on my titties, big as the end of my thumb,Daddy you say that's the kind of 'em you want, and you can make 'em come,Oh, daddy shave me dry,
(Roland: She ain't gonna work for it.)
And I'll give you somethin' baby, swear it'll make you cry.I'm gon' turn back my mattress, and let you oil my springs,I want you to grind me daddy, 'til the bell do ring,Oh daddy, want you to shave 'em dry,Oh great God daddy, if you can't shave 'em baby won't you try?
Now if fuckin' was the thing, that would take me to heaven,I'd be fuckin' in the studio, till the clock strike eleven,Oh daddy, daddy shave 'em dry,
I would fuck you baby, honey I'd make you cry.Now your nuts hang down like a damn bell sapper,And your dick stands up like a steeple,Your goddam ass-hole stands open like a church door,And the crabs walks in like people.
Aside: Ow, shit!
(Roland: Aah, sure enough, shave 'em dry?)
Aside: Ooh! Baby, won't you shave 'em dry
A big sow gets fat from eatin' corn,And a pig gets fat from suckin',Reason you see this whore, fat like I am,Great God, I got fat from fuckin'.
Aside: Eeeeh! Shave 'em dry
(Roland: Aah, shake it, don't break it)
My back is made of whalebone,And my cock is made of brass,And my fuckin' is made for workin' men's two dollars,Great God, round to kiss my ass.
Aside: Oh! Whoo, daddy, shave 'em dry"

70 years on and still carrying a Parental Guidance sticker....

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OLD FUCK
I may have found a contender for the title of Earliest Recorded Fuck. And it's really quite old. More soon, once I've investigated......

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JESUS SHITTING CHRIST!
Because I work in the London office of a Big American Internet Company, one of things I am required to worry about is whether or not we can swear on the site.

This is an issue that comes into focus at this time of the year because of the imminence of Big Brother. Quite apart from the rumour that one of the candidates on the shortlist is a sufferer from Tourette’s syndrome (though this is a story that I recall being peddled last year, too), you can more or less guarantee that as the progranmme progresses, it will degenerate into a festival of fucks, shits , wankers etc

But it is very popular and we need to decide what our users (and our US owners, Americans tending to be more puritanical about this sort of stuff than Brits) can take.

With this in mind we had a look at a document prepared by Ofcom (a sort of media regulatory organisation) about what is and isn’t acceptable on TV. With impressive, if rather po-faced thoroughness, Ofcom has asked a cross-section of the population how offended they would be by different expressions, running the gamut from ‘motherfucker’ through ‘blaadclaat’ and ‘bumbu’ (whose definition is not given but I’m guessing it’s about being gay) through to ‘spade’, ‘yid’ and ‘papist’. ‘Shit’, slightly to my surprise, is described as a ‘mild, toilet word, not really offensive’. (“David Currie, the chairman of Ofcom, apologised for being late for the meeting, explaining that he had just been for a shit….”)

What stood out in this swearfest was the very first item on the Ofcom list: the phrase ‘Bastard God’. This sounds like the sort of thing Aleister Crowley might have screamed at the climax of a black mass but isn’t the sort of obscenity you hear on Coronation Streer. I typed it into a search engine and didn’t get much back, other than a blog about Buddhism and a Myspace profile of a heavy metal band called The Arm and Sword of a Bastard God (why can’t black metal bands have nice names….?).

Next on the list is ‘Jesus shitting Christ’. Does anybody, anywhere talk like this or is someone at Ofcom making this stuff up?

The full document is here. The list is right at the end.

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FUCK!
The first televised 'fuck' is a celebrated moment in social and cultural history (November 13 1965, Kenneth Tynan, "I doubt if there are any rational people to whom the word "fuck" would be particularly diabolical, revolting or totally forbidden.")

Was there an equivalent taboo-shattering moment in rock music? Obviously pop 'fucks' are ten a penny these days. Radio stations hardly bother to bleep them out. But who was first? You would think that a medium that makes such a fetishish of rebellion would be able to point proudly to the first recorded 'fuck'. But apparently not.

In the late Seventies, John Cooper Clarke had a poem called Evidently Chickentown that, live, went (from memory):

"The fucking cops are fucking keen
They fucking keep it fucking clean
The fucking chief's a fucking swine
He fucking draws the fucking line
The fucking kids he fucking blames
The fucking fun and fucking games
Are nowhere to be fucking found
Anywhere in Chickentown"

Clarke was highlighting the banality of repeated obscenities but when he came to record Chickentown in 1980, he had to change all the fucks to bloodys, which spoilt his poem and undermined his point. This kind of censorship was fairly common in those days and record execs commonly used the excuse that they were sparing the feelings of 'the ladies in the pressing plant' (rather than of the humourless City suits who sat on their boards).

There was the odd 'fuck' in the punk repertoire (though not as many as you might have expected) but what about earlier?

In the mid 60s, Country Joe and the Fish used to begin a number with a chant of "give us an F, give us an I, give us an S, give us an H" which over time mutated into "Give us an F...U...C...K": but was that live or was it ever recorded?

Similarly the MC5 used to scream "Kick out the jams, motherfuckers" at gigs but on record it became "brothers and sisters". I have a feeling that I've heard a live recording of the Door's The End in which Jim Morrison announces "Mother, I'm going to fuck you" but on record you hear "Mother, I'm going to..." followed by some incoherent screams.

So much for the 60s rebels. I'd like to think that pop music was pushing back the bounds of obscenity long before a foppish drama critic on the BBC, but I'm struggling. Back in the 50s was there a foul-mouthed bluesman or proto-rocker who committed the F-word to vinyl? If so, it's time he got the recognition he deserves.

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