The WOMAN TAKEN in ADULTERY

There is no sanctimonious little twerp anywhere in these islands more deserving of a come-uppance than Peter Robinson. The former estate agent became First Minister of the Northern Ireland assembly some eighteen months ago in succession to his mentor, Dr Ian Paisley. He also sits in the Commons where he is the longest-serving Belfast MP (31 years) in the history of the province. His wife Iris, to whom he has been married for rising 40 years, is also a member both at Stormont and Westminster. They like to be known as “the first couple” in Belfast, but in London they are more often referred to – due to the extravagance of their expenses claims, their combined income from various sources (above half a million per year) and their ostentatious expenditure – as “the Swish Family Robinson”.

"It's a little secret, just the Robinsons' affair" [Paul Simon]: Just after Christmas, Iris Robinson announced that she was withdrawing from public life “for mental health reasons”. Last Wednesday, aware that a BBC Northern Ireland current affairs reporter and producer knew a good deal about the circumstances of her withdrawal, she issued an emotional statement, admitting to an extramarital affair that she blamed on her mental state. She had, she declared, tried to take her own life back in March. Ahead of the broadcast of the programme (in Northern Ireland on Friday evening; available throughout the UK on BBC iPlayer until next Friday), the notion was put about that Mrs Robinson’s lover had been “a local businessman”.



Iris Robinson not (I think) from her own campaign literature

Thereafter, Iris Robinson went to ground, or was put to ground. The Sunday Times reports her holed up in the French ski resort of Chamonix where, interestingly, Elin Nordegren repaired in face of the unfolding publicity about the affairs of her husband, Tiger Woods. Peter Robinson now took control of the story, decided to play it as if all were open and above board and invited the BBC’s camera and other selected reporters to his study where, dressed in studiedly casual clothes (the kind an estate agent would affect), he unburdened himself of his own statement.

The pearl at its centre is this passage: “I love my wife. I have always been faithful to her. In a spirit of humility and repentance, Iris sought my forgiveness, she took responsibility upon herself alone for her actions and I have forgiven her. More important, I know she has sought and received god’s forgiveness. I only ask, if people feel they must judge her, that they find within themselves, as I have done, the gift of doing so with mercy and compassion”.



The Elin Nordegren of Stormont

"Jesus loves you more than you will know" [Simon}: That the almighty turns out to be liberal on adultery is clearly to the enormous advantage of the Robinsons. What has been historically a bull point for the Unionists in the perceived wisdom of said almighty is that he is reliably supportive of moral superiority. Moral superiority has ever been the central plank of Unionism in Ireland, politically as well as spiritually. Peter Robinson, as may be detected in his statement, is so in thrall to moral superiority that, even in her agony, he cannot forebear publicly to score moral points off his wife (“I have always been faithful to her”) as well as off everyone else (“I only ask … people … [to] find within themselves, as I have done … mercy and compassion”). As I say, a sanctimonious little twerp.

Darragh MacIntyre’s report for Spotlight, produced by Mary McKeagney, appears to pull no punches. What Peter Robinson called “Iris’s inappropriate relationship” was with someone who only became anything resembling “a local businessman” as a result of Mrs Robinson’s connections. He is Kirk McCambley, the son of Iris’s butcher, a boy she had known since he was nine. In 2008, Bill the butcher died and Iris took Kirk under her wing; there is no mention in the story of Kirk’s mother. They became lovers. Iris was 59, Kirk 19, so she was well old enough to be his grandmother.



Local businessman, aged 19

The Bible story of the woman taken in adultery is the source of Christ’s admonition “let him who is without sin cast the first stone” and we shall occupy no moral high ground concerning the sexual aspects of this story, save in this regard. Iris Robinson, rather inconveniently for her present circumstances, has been most widely known until the present shemozzl for a thoroughly unforgiving stance on the sexual morality of others. On the very morning that her husband was succeeding to the post of first minister, Mrs Robinson was telling BBC Radio Ulster that homosexuality was “an abomination”. She advocated that gay people should seek a cure for their condition. On another occasion, she told BBC Radio 5: “I have a very lovely psychiatrist who works with me in my offices and his Christian background is that he tries to help homosexuals, trying to turn away from what they are engaged in”. In the Commons, she announced that “there can be no viler act, apart from homosexuality and sodomy, than sexually abusing children”. It would be instructive to know whether Mrs Robinson’s “very lovely psychiatrist” has been able to winkle out at what age, between nine and 19, the butcher’s boy first became sexually alluring to her.

"Coo, coo, ca-choo, Mrs Robinson" [Simon]: Iris Robinson is a born-again Christian, unlike her husband who is a life-long evangelical, but as we know it is frequently the converts who become, metaphorically or otherwise, the suicide bombers. Iris’s deployment of the term “abomination” in describing gay people has its origin, as you might guess, in The Bible, specifically Leviticus 20:13: “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them”. Most unfortunately for the sainted Iris, we find this in Leviticus just three verses earlier: “And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death”.


Peter Robinson tries out an AK-47, Israel 1986

Such death is not sanctioned by scripture if it is administered by one’s own hand. Here is the First Book of Corinthians 6:19: “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body”. In other words, Iris, suicide isn’t smiled on much in the scriptures either.

On the morning of the night in March when Mrs Robinson attempted to do away with herself with an overdose, Mr Robinson ascertained that she was conscious, phoned her aide, Selwyn Black, and then left for Stormont. She was hence alone until Black and paramedics arrived, the latter determining that she ought to be hospitalised. While others took care of her, Robinson was making jokes at the despatch box – "Going to the candidates' debates" [Simon]. He rationalised this callous behaviour in his statement thus: “I’ve never allowed my personal life to interfere with my work”. A sanctimonious little twerp, as I say.

"We'd like to know a little bit about you for our files" [Simon]: So far so simple. Now it grows murkier, as these things will. Using her political power, Iris solicited £50,000 start-up capital from two local entrepreneurs, so as to set up young Master McCambley in a restaurant in a fashionable riverside development. McCambley won the contract for the enterprise against some competition, despite having no experience in business or as a restaurateur. Iris Robinson sat on the council that awarded the contract. Having secured his situation, Iris then demanded a ten percent facility fee in cash. In every detail itemised in this paragraph, she was either breaking the law or breaching government regulation or both.



Iris and Peter hear of the sad death of Stephen Gately

Not surprisingly, the relationship with McCambley soon broke down. “Just cut links with Kirk” she texted Black. “God’s word was very clear on it”. You might think it a pity that the almighty didn’t find it within himself to be a bit more upfront at the outset of the relationship. Has he not heard of stable doors and horses bolting? Iris’s reaction was to demand the return of the £45,000, partly to clear her own debts, partly to be donated as conscience money to the church; as it happens, in this case, to the church run by her sister-in-law. The church never received any payment. At this point, the Robinsons were holidaying at their Florida flat so all the arrangements had to be conducted by Selwyn Black who, understandably, began to object that, as a former RAF chaplain, he didn’t think that looking after an adulterer’s financial affairs fell within his sense of what was proper, let alone his job description.

"Where have you gone, Ken Maginnis, oh?" [after Simon]: Back in Belfast, Iris Robinson began blatantly lobbying for contracts on behalf of the surviving creditor who had bankrolled McCambley’s business. It was at around this point that Peter Robinson became involved (and she attempted suicide). Discovering that his wife was misusing funds, contacts and contracts, he ought to have made a full breast of it to the committee overseeing propriety or otherwise in ministerial dealings. But he did not. “They both knew the consequences of what they had been involved in,” Black told Spotlight at the programme’s conclusion, “and did nothing to address that circumstance. It goes right to the heart of credibility in Northern Ireland”.



Marilyn (aka Peter Robinson but perhaps a different one)

At least one section of the community is having a deserved good laugh at the expense of the Robinsons. A correspondent wrote to The Guardian on Friday: “May I be the first homosexual to genuinely wish Iris Robinson MP a complete and swift recovery?” And the gay monthly magazine Attitude, in a spirit of merry satire, has invited Kirk McCambley to pose as its next cover pin-up.

"Ev'ry way you look at it, you lose" [Simon]: In sum, this lurid affair pans out as a curious mirror image of the Tiger Woods scandal, this time with the wife dallying with the parochially Irish equivalent of a nightclub hostess and the husband playing the martyred, wronged but vindictive partner, so it is poetic that Mrs Woods and Mrs Robinson should flee to the same glamorous refuge. So far, Elin Nordegren has emerged in rather better shape than Peter Robinson whose political future is very much in the balance. Whether, with its tradition of moral superiority, the Democratic Unionist Party will continue to support him must be in doubt. Perhaps they will say to him, as they have already said to his wife, what Christ said to the woman taken in adultery: “go, and sin no more”.

OVERPARTED?

On the cover of the new issue of Private Eye, Herman Van Rompuy and Baroness Ashton are embracing each other under the headline “European Union: It’s the Kiss of Death!” His speech bubble says “ I love EU …”, hers “… and I love EU too!” and along the bottom runs the legend “On Other Pages: Who are EU two?”

It’s a long way from the magazine’s best effort, combining a Sun-type gor-blimey pun with a very conventional take on the news. The press – in Britain, at least – have united in scoffing at the European Union’s appointments to the new posts created under the Lisbon treaty. The consensus is that these two new officers of the union are at best lightweights and unknown quantities.

I find this at best presumptuous, insulting and more informative about the nature of the consensus than about the individuals in question. If political commentators in London have not heard of Cathy Ashton – and an Express leader headline managed to call her Margaret Ashton – that merely shows how little notice the British press takes of European politics generally.



The new EU stars

But of course most of them have heard of her. Belittling her name recognition is just an affectation, all part of the anti-Labour stance now widely embraced in what used to be called Fleet Street. If for no better reason, they know her as the wife of Peter Kellner, long one of their own and in recent years the frontman for the psephological organisation YouGov. But on her own terms, Ashton was Labour leader in the Lords before going to Brussels to succeed Peter Mandelson as Commissioner for Trade, a role in which she evidently impressed. She is amply qualified for her new job.

Much more press fuss has been made about the supposed obscurity of Ashton than about the supposed obscurity of Van Rompuy and paradoxically that is of course because he really is an unknown to the British press, being merely the prime minister of a nearby country. What could be duller for a British newspaper than to concern itself with the politics of Belgium? Indeed, the anti-Europe bias in the press is as evident as the anti-Labour bias. The egregious columnist of The Daily Telegraph, Simon Heffer, considers himself a card for referring to the new Chairman of the European Council as “Mr Rumpy Pumpy”. Do you see what he did there? Eh? Do you see? My long-time name for the columnist is Syphon Effluent. It’s a damned sight more pertinent than Mr Rumpy Pumpy.

The narrative here is really too obvious for the commentators to bother expounding. Van Rompuy and Ashton got the jobs because of a stitch-up between the wicked Germans and the slimy French who needed patsies whom they could boss around so that they would be able to arrogate all the power to themselves. This Ruritanian vision of Europe is made plausible by the absence of any substantial on-going coverage of Europe.

Let’s try to make some sense of it. There is certainly history here. When the presidency of the European Commission fell vacant five years ago, France and Germany wanted the then Belgian premier, Guy Verhofstadt, to have the post. But Verhofstadt’s strong criticism of the invasion of Iraq and his opposition to any mention of god in the European Constitution predictably alienated Tony Blair and his Catholic-and-invasion ally, José Maria Aznar of Spain. After protracted negotiations, a compromise candidate was found, one whose name meant little in Fleet Street: José Manuel Barroso. No doubt Barroso’s name is still obscure to most voters and even to some journalists (who, I bet, need to check his spelling when they have call to use it) but the former prime minister of Portugal’s first term was generally considered a success among those who count – pro-European politicians – and he easily won re-election.

Blair’s opposition to Verhofstadt, almost as much as his role in the Iraq war, ensured that any aspiration he might have entertained to be EC chairman would be futile. Serve him right. David Miliband’s attempt to talk up Blair’s chances by describing him as one who would “stop the traffic” in Beijing was never seriously a consideration. The office itself opens the necessary doors if not the jams. Van Rompuy and Ashton can get anyone they wish to consult to the phone in minutes and to a meeting at short notice. Just because the Sunday Express doesn’t know who they are, it doesn’t mean that Washington, Beijing, New Delhi, Jerusalem, Pretoria and all other homes of key players did not bone up within minutes of the appointments being confirmed.

And there’s another bone of contention artificially worried by the dogs of Fleet Street and beyond. Oh gosh, these people weren’t elected, goes up the cry. Quick, what are they paid? Who, if anyone, are they answerable to? Lots of powerful people have not submitted themselves to any electorate. Billionaire newspaper proprietors who live in tax exile, just for starters. The British prime minister for another, and several of his ministers (notably Peter, Lord Mandelson). But don’t let’s get too carried away about that. Two of the last four Tory prime ministers arrived in Downing Street without benefit of a popular vote. John Major made himself more legitimate by winning an election in 1992 – as against the odds as Labour will do if they win next year. But Sir Alec Douglas-Home was a hereditary peer when the Tory suits decided he should succeed Harold Macmillan (who also was never elected) as PM in 1963 and he had to renounce his earldom and fight a by-election in order to join the Commons before he could take up office. Surely it couldn’t happen now.

In the States, everyone down to city dog-catcher gets to be on the ballot paper when voting time comes round, but the government in Washington is made up wholly of appointees, many of whom have never sought elective office. The argument that people should all be elected only really starts to be pregnant in a comprehensively informed electorate. Ours is far from being even moderately informed. It’s clear, after two mayors of London, that only someone known by his or her first name has any chance of being elected to the position. That seems to make Camilla, Esther, Stelios, Kylie, Ant, Dec and Brucie the front-runners to succeed Boris.

Head teachers, chiefs of police, magistrates, chiefs of staff, chief executives of strategic health authorities and any number of other key wielders of power are appointees rather than elected tribunes. The primary advantage of appointing someone to a position of power is that the considerations that inform the appointment centre on suitability, skill, contacts, quickness of study and ability to manage a team. These are not qualities that the electorate looks for, let alone is competent to judge. Being good on the telly may weigh with a lot of voters but what it tends to put into office is George W Bush.

The supposed desire for figures stepping onto the world stage to be already “household names” is in any case rarely heeded. My mother, a reasonably well-informed woman, died in summer 1988 and I have often reflected how strange it is that the man who became British prime minister only 16 months later was someone of whom she probably had not heard and certainly would not have recognised from a photograph.

In The Guardian recently, that prize ass Mark Lawson wrote a supposedly comical piece set five years hence in which the American president was Sarah Palin and the British prime minister Boris Johnson. Were I a betting man, I would wager that he’s completely wrong. After all, he might have bet on Gordon Brown five years ago but he wouldn’t have anticipated President Obama. Who did, back then? After his famous speech at the 2004 Democrats’ convention, people certainly said “one day that man will be president”. Not many would have thought he would be the next one. Fame in politics is a fast-moving phenomenon. Can you hazard who, at the outset of 1990, was the hot favourite to succeed Thatcher? Not John Major, obviously. I’ll tell you at the foot of the posting.

The electoral process generates much more chance and unpredictability than any other system (which is why I keep saying that the triumphant election of the Tories next May cannot be seen as a foregone conclusion). Appointment is designed to control events, smooth the way for successful government and head off unpredictability. Those who sat down to dinner and thrashed out the deal that led to the appointments of Van Rompuy and Ashton knew their candidates and believed them able to carry out their duties to the European Commission’s advantage. Whatever horse-trading went on, it is hardly in the interests of President Sarkozy or Chancellor Merkel to saddle themselves with team leaders who are not up the job. Let’s just be grown-up about this.

Oh and the anointed successor expected to become Tory leader after the dreaded Margaret was none other than Kenneth Baker. Oh yes.

DOG DAYS for GOD

God has had an interesting week. Robert Mugabe, unexpectedly re-elected by a grateful nation for a sixth term as leader of the flourishing and happy land that is Zimbabwe, explicitly put himself out of reach of democracy ahead of the presidential run-off in which he was the only candidate: “only god who appointed me will remove me,” he assured us, “not the MDC, not the British”. And, though he didn’t say so, not the votes of his own people either.

I hadn’t realised until his campaigning speech that his eminence the Zimbabwean president was in office by divine decree. But indeed the oath of office he took yesterday goes like this: “I, Robert Gabriel Mugabe, do swear that I will truly serve in the office of president, so help me god”. That neither the word ‘truly’ nor the word ‘serve’ sticks in his craw is an indication of just how deep Mr Gabriel Mugabe’s devout and pious conviction runs.

Of course, religious people across the world and throughout history will understand exactly where the president is, as they say, coming from. No one knows better than the religious what it means to exterminate, murder, rape, pillage, mutilate, oppress, torture and terrorise. By such means has religious superiority been expressed and clerical writ run since long before the lives of any of the prophets. Of course Mugabe is a religious man. The vast majority of dictators, oppressors and tyrants have been guided by a belief in their own divine right. Religion itself is a tyranny, a system of imperatives and obligations designed to keep the masses quiescent while the leisured classes plunder the riches of the planet without guilt or fear. That’s what religion is for.

Meanwhile, the Anglican communion is imploding across the world. A group of reactionary bishops, many of them representing African sees, announced this weekend the formation of the exquisitely named FOCA. This acronym (which clearly requires to be spoken in a Brooklyn accent) stands for The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans. Though the organisers demur at the suggestion, this is of course a deliberate act of schism. The Archbishop of Canterbury will be forgiven if he mishears the new organisation’s name as FOC-U.

And what is the great issue upon which the Anglican church is foundering? Murderous tyranny, perhaps? Famine? Poverty? Terrorism? Climate change? None of the above. Never mind the matters that affect the safety and survival of human beings and indeed of the planet itself. It is the wicked and irreligious practice of love. The miserable old gits who make it their business to interfere in the lives and arrangements of others in the name of supernatural mumbo-jumbo are prepared to destroy their ancient church over the love that now dares to speak its name.

All religions are homophobic. Many of them declare same-sex love to be a capital offence. They wash their hands of the persecution that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people suffer in all societies to some degree. You might think that a Christian of colour would know something of persecution and feel some human sympathy for those who suffer it. You might well imagine that their scriptures, that are allegedly so suffused with goodness and holiness, would instruct them not to cast a stone until they are themselves without sin or to attend to the beam in their own eye or to turn the other cheek or to forgive the sinner. This guidance evidently only suits when it is convenient. Scripture is a cut-and-come-again cake and you eat what you fancy and leave the rest. Like all rules and regulations, they only apply to other people.

Archbishop Jensen of Sydney, the likely king over the water of FOC-U, can feel very pleased this week that history has twinned him with someone almost as kindly and sensitive and inclusive and sympathetic as himself, Gabriel Mugabe. If we rationalists turn out to be wrong after all, then no doubt these two dear men will enjoy eternity together, burning in hell. Because, god knows, they’re wrong.

NEVER HEARD SUCH LANGUAGE

When I was young, older people (women, especially) were apt to utter “language!” as a reproof when someone said something that they perceived as offensive. It was shorthand for “Please do not use bad language”. ‘Bad’ or ‘strong’ language consisted of the milder swearwords or anything generally considered vulgar or blasphemous. Expletives – “four-letter words” – were never used, save in very male company, hence expressions such as “swearing like a trooper”. And if you were unguarded enough to use ‘strong language’ without first looking about you (in the street, for instance), a man would be bound to come up to you and say, politely but firmly: “Would you mind moderating your language? There are ladies present”. These days, I am sometimes minded to approach young women who are giving it out loudly: “Please, miss, have a care. There are gentlemen present”. But they wouldn’t get it.

Nobody needs reminding how words that at one time could only be spoken sotto voce are now routinely shouted by six year-olds from the proverbial rooftops, not in order to give offence but because they are used as unselfconscious emphasis. The sense of taboo has simply fallen away. The only word restrictions that survive are upon those that might insult individuals who are different from oneself.

In 1914, Bernard Shaw could cause a theatrical frisson with – and at the same time get away with – having Mrs Patrick Campbell utter “Not bloody likely!” in the Galatea role of Eliza in the first run of his 23rd play, Pygmalion. By the time of My Fair Lady, the musical version of Shaw’s play 42 years later, ‘bloody’ had lost its power to cause a “sensation” and Alan Jay Lerner’s Eliza was instead given a vulgarity, yelled in support of her horse in the second race at Ascot: “Come on, Dover!!! Move your bloomin’ arse!!!” (I replicate Lerner’s own multiple exclamation marks).

Shaw understood exactly what swearing was about. It expressed anger, acute pain or, as in Eliza’s case, vehemence in an abrupt and graphic manner. But it was not suitable in ‘polite society’ where such evident lack of self-control sorted ill with the mores. Now that there is no longer any such thing as politeness or, according to Margaret Thatcher, society, the ‘shock’ of ‘language’ has declined.

Instead, expletives are discussed in semi-academic terms in books (eg The F-Word: the Complete History of the Word in All Its Robust and Various Uses, ed: Jesse Sheidlower) and even on telly (eg Dr Germaine Greer advocating the use of ‘cunt’ in a short visual essay). This gives the lie to the argument that ‘four-letter words’ are the purview of people who are barely one up from illiteracy.

But I always knew that was untrue. When, in the late 1960s, I read English at University College London, there were two heads of the Department. Prof Frank Kermode was the most elegant, witty and enthralling lecturer I can hope to hear. As I write, he continues to publish elegant, witty and enthralling books in his mid 80s. Joint head was Sir Frank’s fellow Manxman, Prof Randolph Quirk, now Baron Quirk of Bloomsbury in the London Borough of Camden, to give him his full, splendid title. Lord Quirk was also a witty man. While Sir Frank’s area was literature, his was language. His wonderful book, The Use of English, is still the standard text.

Now, because I stupidly failed Part I in Old English, taken a year before Finals, I had to resit the paper and, along with other failures, I received extra tuition from Prof Quirk himself. My fellow students were less diligent about attendance than me, so I sometimes found myself alone with the daunting professor. The absences irritated him. He would throw open his door and bellow into the corridor: “Where are those cunts?” The air, as they used to say, was blue. Nobody, though, could accuse Prof Quirk of having no alternative words to hand. He was utilizing the full range of language and, you could posit, appropriately in the circumstances.

Victorian novels would convey frustration by having a character (always male, I think) cry “D–– it!” or some equally bowdlerized term. This could be understood by a lady reader to stand for “dash it!”, a mild enough imprecation for her to imagine if not actually to utter. Before and since that time, many mild oaths have been corruptions of blasphemous exclamations: “zounds!”, “lawks-a-mercy!”, “lumme!”, “blimey!”, “struth!” being derived respectively from “God’s wounds!”, “Lord have mercy!”, “God love me!”, “God blind me!”, “God’s truth!”. These euphemisms avoid a breach of the Third Commandment: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain".

‘Stronger’ language seeped into literary novels in the early 20th century. Joyce’s Ulysses and Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover were banned outright in Britain for years. After the trial that liberated the latter book, Penguin’s famous edition circulated widely if discreetly. I remember my teenaged delight at finding a copy secreted in the kitchen drawer. Though notably prudish in all things sexual, my mother could not resist finding out what the fuss was about.

As early as 1934, Cole Porter could remark wittily on the sexual language beginning to appear in the novel:

In olden days a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking
But now, God knows,
Anything goes.

Good authors too who once knew better words
Now only use four-letter words
Writing prose –
Anything goes.

Note that Porter’s “But now, God knows,” is frequently modulated to the more acceptable “Now, Heaven knows,” in recordings of the song.

For my generation, the literature that caused a prurient rush to the bookshops included Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn), Hubert Selby Jr (Last Exit to Brooklyn), William Burroughs (The Naked Lunch) and John Rechy (City of Night and The Sexual Outlaw). These were ‘hot’ novels, not just for the ripeness of their language but more so for the inordinate behaviour that they limned. There is a (conscious) blurring here of the line between literature and pornography, preserved only by the seriousness of intent – or, some would say, the self-serving pretension of the writing.

The function of swearing, it could be argued, is to give offence. While expletives did their job, writers drew attention to themselves by employing them. But there is a perfectly respectable argument for making use of the language that is actually used in society, for writers seeking accuracy and candour in their reflection of people’s talk ...

In 1986, the National Theatre mounted The Petition, a new play by Brian Clark, much of whose work had been written for television. Sir Peter Hall cast Sir John Mills, infrequently seen on stage, opposite the charming and dignified Rosemary Harris. I saw the play in its transfer to Wyndham’s in the West End, where its audience seemed to be even more elderly and conservative than would venture to the National. A distinct froideur wafted from the stalls to the stage when Sir John was obliged to call Miss Harris “a cunt”. To most of the audience, I feel sure, such a word was deeply offensive, inappropriate and uncalled-for, both in such a play and in the mouth of a beloved senior actor. They did not want to be obliged to hear ‘gutter’ language and they resented it. I have some sympathy for their view.

My father and I were watching the late-night programme BBC3 (on BBC2) in November 1965, when that estimable imp, Kenneth Tynan, was asked by the host Robert Robinson whether sexual intercourse might be permissible on the stage of the National Theatre, where Tynan was literary manager.

“Certainly” said Tynan, seeming to answer a different question altogether. “| think there are very few rational people in this world to whom the word ‘fuck’ is particularly diabolical or revolting or totally forbidden”. Coming back to Robinson’s point, he went on: “I think that anything that can be printed or said can also be seen”.

Tynan’s conclusion is a major provocation and merits debate. Sadly, his uttering of ‘fuck’, the first recorded instance on British television – conceivably on any television – raised the mother of all hullabaloos. There were questions in the House (in 2006, the great broadcasting issue exercising MPs was Radio 4’s decision to axe the early morning theme tune) and Tynan’s dismissal from the NT was widely called for. Happily, Tynan’s boss, Sir Laurence Olivier, held his nerve and the storm blew out.

Four decades on, ‘fuck’ is heard far more on television than, say, ‘socialist’, ‘existentialism’, ‘poetry’ or ‘modesty’ ...


To read the rest of this disquisition – on the general corruption of language, not merely the rise of "bad language" – see the chapter 'Never Heard Such Language' in my book Common Sense, which is available as a download, entirely free, by clicking on the sidebar link called

COMMON SENSE: The BOOK

If anything in it catches your eye, please pass the link to others.