• 
• • Ryan Gilbey
  • guardian.co.uk

Schoolyard naughtiness … A French Connection shop sign. Photograph: David Sillitoe

Last Sunday, I took my nine-year-old daughter swimming. There was a towel hanging up at the poolside, bearing the letters “fcuk“. “Isn’t that a rude word?” she grinned. “Almost,” I replied. After swimming, we passed a billboard advertising an exhibition by the photographer Rankin. The poster posed the rhetorical question: “Fancy a quick Rank?” Classy. And was I imagining it, or were the words “KING BURGER” on a nearby Burger King poster positioned in such a way as to suggest that “KING” was in fact the second half of a different word altogether? Next we stopped at a shopping centre and made a beeline for the children’s section of Waterstone’s, past copies of Frankie Boyle’s autobiography, which goes by the decidedly un-Wodehousian title My Shit Life So Far.

Now, call me uptight, but that title bothered me. Surely anyone who is familiar with Boyle’s act will agree that the word “Life” should by rights be replaced by “Routine” or “Career.”

Mostly I felt weary of the innuendo and profanity with which I was being bombarded; it was like being trapped in some 3D Carry On film, with Sid James‘s nicotine-caked laugh rattling in my ear at every turn. And now here was My Shit Life So Far, casually displayed as if it were Cider with Rosie. Is it prudish of me to want that book to be kept discreetly out of sight, or to have the profanity covered? I suppose it is. I content myself with the knowledge that the choices companies and individuals make in marketing themselves only reflect the nature of the product they are hawking. If language most shows a man – or, for that matter, a mid-range clothing chain – then the likes of Boyle and French Connection have spoken so that we may know them. Those that wish to purchase slacks from a company that prides itself on almost having “fuck” as its brand name are free to do so.

I say all this as a big fan of swearing. Is there a Facebook group for creative cussing? If so, sign me up. It’s shocking to hear a pre-pubescent girl use the c-word in the new movie Kick-Ass, but that’s between her and her parents. The film is rated 15, so where’s the problem? Likewise, when the f-word came up by chance on a recent edition of the daytime quiz show Countdown, it only vindicated those viewers who watch it for precisely such an occurrence. Does Channel 4 think we all tune in to see if Rick Wakeman is in Dictionary Corner?

Context is everything with swearing. I have been aware of that since the age of eight, when I blithely and misguidedly recounted to my mother the playground joke that begins: “I don’t swear, I don’t smoke, I don’t drink …” So while I’ll occasionally ask people at the next table in a crowded cafe to tone down their language (provided they’re not taller than me), I still think Random House was misguided in compromising Jacqueline Wilson’s authorial voice by replacing the word “twat” with “twit” in her novel My Sister Jodie.

There are worse things that can come out of our mouths than obscenities; I’d be more upset if one of my children used the word “gay” as a pejorative. What grates is the commercial potency that becomes attached to swear words and sexual innuendo through the determination of ad agencies to smuggle as much schoolyard naughtiness as possible past the Advertising Standards Authority. What must that say to children about the preoccupations of the adult world? Only that coarseness sells. And profanity is certainly big business. Leaving the bookshop for the sparkly allure of Paperchase, I was surprised to find a series of crude (and unfunny) greetings cards, in which the store is clearly doing a roaring trade, positioned on a low shelf. I pointed my daughter in the direction of some Easter bunnies to distract her from noticing the cards and asking one of those questions which no father wants to hear: “Daddy, what’s a ‘wankoholic’?