Words Dept.: entry

As Jonathan Ross returns to our screens later, both ITV and the BBC’s flagship current affairs programmes have scheduled timely and hard-hitting investigations into the issue of very rich famous people saying “he fucked your grand-daughter” and stuff.

ITV’s timely attempt to tackle to hard-hitting subject, part of the Tonight strand, was on earlier and was called Is TV Too Rude? This hard-hitting and timely investigation exposed a brave “viewers’ jury” to a series of shocking TV and radio clips containing Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay and Jordan, each of whom vocalised a smorgasbord of popular expletives.

The jurors were made to hold up cheap cardboard signs with red crosses on them if they thought the programme in question shouldn’t have been broadcast. In some cases the clips were so rude that we – the viewers at home – weren’t actually allowed to watch them, while all were bleeped to the point of incomprehensibility. As you can probably imagine, it was deeply hard-hitting, not to mention spectacularly timely.

Predictably, the tie-wearing middle-aged bloke in the grey suit and neatly-combed hair thought virtually all television should be banned and that people who swear have got under-developed language skills (y’know, like monkeys). Whereas the slurry-voiced student with the lop-sided fringe and half-opened brown cardigan was more inclined towards the view that Fern and Phil should be permitted to clog ITV’s morning airwaves with loudly articulated swear-talk, so long as “freedom of speech” is maintained. (I exaggerate, natch.)

They also had some celebrity talking heads on, in order to tackle the hard-hitting issue. Jon “Gaunty” Gaunt (Sun columnist and former TalkSport presenter who was fired in November for calling a local councillor a “Nazi” and an “ignorant pig” live on air) represented the side of the right wing reactionary gobshite fat-heads, while Janet “Street” Porter mouthed off in favour of the greasy-faced sandal-wearing Hampstead-dwelling media village liberal elite who wouldn’t understand the normal, hard-working, family values-loving “British Public” if it phoned them up and boasted about fucking their grand-daughter.

And so half an hour of my life was wasted, reducing my use of the adjectives “timely” and “hard-hitting” to the level of pure sarcasm. Unluckily, Panorama’s no doubt timely and hard-hitting investigation into the issue, fronted by Frank Skinner and subtitled Have I Got Bad Language For You?, screens on Monday night. I’ve got my cheap cardboard sign with a red cross on it at the ready. The c**ts.