Funny old thing, swearing. Does having a potty mouth indicate a shameful lack of vocabulary? Does a plethora of profanities suggest, instead, that you have an innate sense of appropriateness, and, when the moment calls for it, you’ll, you know, jolly well swear if you want to? Couldn’t flipping say. I sit on obscenity’s fence, in this instance.

It came to mind as I watched a toddler teeter on a tricky set of stairs this morning, hand in hand with his mother, a perfectly golden spring sun framing the scene. As he got to the bottom stair he belted out, “f**k! F**k! F**k!” His mother, horrified, reminded him not to say “that word” because “Mummy doesn’t use it”. (Dad, clearly not in the clear at this point).

It was comic, yet I get her concern. What do you do? I mean, FFS, who says “flip” these days? I’m reminded of an article I saw a few years back where the legendary Alex Cox film Repo Man had been dubbed for a younger, perhaps more puritanical audience. The translators/transcribers (oh, OK, the BBC) had nailed it. When confronted with a particularly gritty piece of prose, they’d hit “vanilla” with some real acumen:

“Flip you, you flippin’ melonfarmer!” was the result. Yep.