“other crap, have it back” (Bubblewrap)

“on crap three million it was spent” (Friday Night)

“paper’s full of crap” (Bad Review)

I seem to remember a massive row with me mum in 1974 about whether “crap” was swearing or not. She said it was if it was in church (me bother snitched on me after choir practice). But surely even that’s OK these days.

@ The Laird: As well as the line you cite from 24HGP, there are 12 other “arses” and the “arsed” you mention.

“It’s all my arse” is repeated eight times in “On Reaching the Wensum”

Try and get your arse downtown next week (San Antonio FP)

Queen’s Arse and Firkin (A Country Practice)

Shove a seat beneath my arse (Friday Night)

If I had the arse of a crow (PRS)

There are as you know no examples of “piss”. If I’m not mistaken “he’s pissed and he’s boring” will be the first example of that word in the Opus when it appears on the forthcoming platter.

With the addition of the “arses”, and the realization that most of those are in “Wensum”, maybe I should revise my stat to say that 4 songs between them contain appprox 62% of the total sweariness.

What about ‘arse’? Have you omitted this fine colloquial reference to the posterior region simply by mistake or, as I suspect is the case, because it has been re-classified by the BBC as “not a swear word any more”?

Words like arse, shit(e), bastard and piss are becoming more prevalent on pre-watershed TV and are thus losing their value as swear words. Something must be done about this, questions must be asked in the house!

So, I’ll start your ‘arse’ list for you with the two I can think of off the top of my head and you can fill in the rest. In the meantime let us take up our pens and write to the Daily Mail, The Times, The West Crunge Clarion & Dubious Advertiser and start a campaign to reinstate the aforementioned words as swear words!

“Because you’ve got to get up off your fat arse…” 24 Hour Garage People

“And the others aren’t arsed either way…” Look Dad, No Tunes.

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What about ‘Is your child hyperactive, or is he perhaps a twat?’ in Surging Out Of Convalescence?

“Stavanger Toestub” is, as Bobby cautions, the rudest song in the oeuvre, though you’re just counting sheer volume of taboo words then technically “Shit Arm”is the rudest of all with 16 repetitions of the eponymous expletive.

Between them, these 2 songs and “National Shite Day” account for nearly 60% of the total of 76 naughty-step words in the 167 songs.

“Fuck” appears 9 times in The Compleat Workes. 5 of these (including the one Chris has down as “fu-“ ) are in Toestub. Variations like “Fucking, fucking hell, fuckinell”, etc appear another 10 times.

“Shit” appears 22 times, including 3 in Toestub and 16 in Shit Arm.

“Shite” appears 15 times, 12 times in the 3 choruses of “NSD” of course. Plus “gobshite” 3 times.

“Twat” occurs 4 times, including 3 in Toestub, plus “t-w-a-t-o-n-e” of course.

“Bastard” occurs 15 times including just 2 in Toestub.

“Dick” only appears once (Adrian/Sophie’s appendage), plus as Dick Quax of course.

“Cock” does not appear. “Cocks” appears only as the place name “Three Cocks”. The other notorious C-word does not appear either. This seems to me to indicate that NB 57’s swearing is in fact pretty fucking tasteful and a bloody good example for the kids
(except, surprisingly perhaps, he doesn’t seem to use “bloody” at all).

Exxo.

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Honestly, some people have no taste