Ever since the technology has existed for an accurate count to be made, it has been known that this newspaper prints the major swearwords more often than any other. Our closest rival in this respect, the Independent, manages but a small fraction of our indecency. Every other paper in the world is, as the then readers' editor Ian Mayes put it, "nowhere". Take, for instance, the Toronto Star, which refused to print the name of the rock band known to Canadians as Fucked-Up. As the editor-in-chief at the time explained, the TS was a "family newspaper". But the sweetest detail is that the e-in-c's name was Fred Kuntz. As Silverton adds in a bracket after imparting this information: "Yes, I know."
Having something of a potty mouth myself or, to put it another way, a deep respect for the astonishingly wide range of nuance and emotional relief that can be contained in the briefest, punchiest words I found this a particularly amusing and informative book. (And it would have been even better if Portobello had employed the services of a proofreader.)
Silverton may edge towards facetiousness at times but this comes with the territory and, being as reliably informative as he is, we can excuse his occasional levity. His observation is trustworthy: his description of the passengers on the 207 bus, and particularly the Poles who use the word kurwa (whore) like a kind of comma, is one whose veracity I can confirm at first hand. When he says the phrase "piss-take" dates back only to 1976 I am surprised, but will accept the assertion. And knowing a smattering of Hungarian curses (it is very useful and therapeutic, I have discovered, to know how to swear in a difficult foreign language; such as when stuck in heavy traffic with a car full of small children), I can also confirm that his rendition and translation of the phrase that begins "az isten bassza meg . . ." is on the money.
Indeed, swearing says things about nationalities, as well as about what's going through people's minds. Modern Hebrew, for reasons Silverton goes into, has to turn to Arabic for its swearwords (throughout the book Silverton saves space and time by using the endearingly childish word "swears"); when Mexican football fans cheer their team on with the phrase "Viva México! Hijos de la Chingada!" they are neatly encapsulating the country's history and psyche. It takes Silverton two and a half pages to explain why; but they are two and a half very interesting pages. You also learn, elsewhere, that when Peter the Great personally executed the Kremlin guards who had staged an uprising, he did so to the accompaniment of a 74-word curse.
One comes away deeply impressed by the malleability and profundity of dirty language throughout the world and its evolution through time. It is also instructive to see how singers have tried to smuggle rude language into their lyrics, or even brazenly recorded songs of astonishing filthiness for their own amusement. This is an area in which Silverton is particularly impressive: he started his career on Sounds, the rock weekly (which, unlike the NME and Rolling Stone, never allowed its pages to be sullied by profanity, despite his efforts), and speaks with authority on the various bad-language milestones in the career of the Sex Pistols indeed, the book begins with the occasion when Bill Grundy goaded Steve Jones into calling him a "dirty fucker". (Silverton also wanted the book to be called after the first six words of Ian Dury's song "Plaistow Patricia". Neither agent nor publisher had any problem with this, but the title had to be changed to Filthy English because of what is known as "the Scunthorpe problem" that is, the adamantine prudishness of internet firewalls when faced by anything even innocently rude.
If I have any reservations about the book it is that, for all its richness, I still have a nagging sense of there being something missed here. It is written in the British traditions of empiricism and comedy, so you will not find much in the way of deep theoretical analysis. The chapter on the psychology of swearing, for instance, could have been longer. But I suppose I can't really fucking grumble.
