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Psalter and Hours of Bonne of Luxembourg
A life-size arme Christi, the side wound of Christ, or “the entrance to Christ’s heart”

It was ten years after the Lady Chatterley trial until ‘cunt’ hit the headlines again, when “the most offensive word you can use on British TV” (James Doorne, 2007) was uttered for the first time on live television in 1970. David Frost was interviewing the Yippies during ITV’s The Frost Programme, and introduced Jerry Rubin as “a reasonable man”. Felix Dennis shouted back, jokingly, “He’s not a reasonable man, he’s the most unreasonable cunt I’ve ever known in my life!”. There ensued an atmosphere of general pandemonium; Dennis admitted to behaving “bloody abominably” (Richard Cowles and Colin Campbell, 2002) and Rosie Boycott later accused him of “wreak[ing] havoc on live television [and] effectively [bringing] the show to a standstill” (Andy Baybutt, 2002).

The very nature of live broadcasting makes unexpected events a distinct possibility. If a programme is broadcast live, mistakes cannot be rectified in the editing room, and advantage can be taken of the situation because a live broadcast allows unfiltered access to the airwaves.

The first scripted use of ‘cunt’ on television - the first time its use was premeditated by a broadcaster, in contrast to the unforeseen use by the Yippies - was in the ITV drama No Mama No:

“What did he say?”
“He said your Dr Cawston is a cunt” (1979).

Verity Lambert persuaded the Independent Broadcasting Authority that the use of ‘cunt’ was dramatically valid: “I had a lot of correspondence with the IBA about that word. I think it was a real insult, and she needed to say that particular word. And, in the end, to be fair to them, they accepted that as an explanation” (Kerry Richardson, 1994). By contrast, American television was a ‘cunt’-free zone until as late as 1994, when chat-show host Phil Donahue used the word “in relating and condemning an employer’s insult to a female employee” (Jesse Scheidlower, 1995).

Such is the word’s scarcity on television that several programmes have been erroneously credited with being the first to broadcast it. Auberon Waugh cites No Mama No as “perhaps the first use on television of the most controversial word of all” (Kerry Richardson, 1994), though, as noted previously, ‘cunt’ was scripted into this 1979 drama nine years after it was uttered live on The Frost Programme.

Years later, John Walsh confidently declared that ‘cunt’ was used on live TV for the first time as late as 2002: “It is, or was, the last linguistic taboo, the final insult, the unsayable word. […] But now history has been made. For probably the first time, someone has said the “c-word” live on British television”. Walsh was referring to This Morning, the live daytime ITV programme during which Caprice, discussing her role in The Vagina Monologues, mentioned the section “called Reclaiming Cunt” (Siubhan Richmond, 2002). This was certainly groundbreaking, as the word was spoken on morning television, though it was clearly not the first time the word had ever been broadcast live.

A similar mistake was made by Matthew Beard and Victoria Coren, both of whom mistakenly claimed that the 2003 drama Witchcraze marked the BBC’s first broadcast of the dreaded word. In C-Word Allowed To Make Debut On BBC Television, Beard wrote that “A drama-documentary on witches on BBC2 is to risk the wrath of viewers by featuring the “C-word” - previously considered so unutterable that it has never been passed by BBC television censors” (2003). Coren agreed that “[in Witchcraze] BBC airwaves played host for the very first time to what I believe the more delicate members of society refer to as ‘the c-word’” (2003). The Sun also gleefully announced that Witchcraze would “break one of TV’s last taboos” (C-Word Shock, 2003).

The Channel 4 drama Mosley was yet another programme incorrectly cited as the first to contain the word ‘cunt’. In its final episode, a prison guard shouted “You cunt!” (Robert Knights, 1998) at the eponymous character. This, predictably, caused revulsion from the Mail On Sunday, which reported that Channel 4 “will break the last taboo over bad language on television […] with the deliberate use of the only word in the English language considered more offensive than the F-word” (Michael Burke, 1998). The newspaper did not print ‘cunt’ itself, though it solemnly proclaimed the word to be “an anatomical reference [which is] deeply offensive to women in particular”.

The Mail declared that ‘cunt’ “has not been scripted into a mainstream television drama before”, though this is incorrect on two counts. Firstly, Mosley is not a mainstream drama, as Channel 4 is not a mainstream channel; secondly, ‘cunt’ had appeared previously, in the mainstream ITV drama No Mama No. Regarding Mosley, Laurence Marks explained that the decision to include ‘cunt’ was not an easy one to make: “it is intensely powerful […] we debated long and hard about using the word. There were many on the production team who thought we should not. The word is the most reviled single utterance in the English language […] We know this word will jar but it was used for dramatic effect” (Michael Burke, 1998). (The word appeared in another prison drama, Ghosts… Of The Civil Dead, when it was forcibly tattooed onto a prisoner’s forehead.)

Tabloid journalists leaping to conclusions is one thing, though Irvine Welsh should really know better. Welsh confidently declared in 2003 that ‘cunt’ was first broadcast in a programme he had written eight years previously: “the word cunt was first aired on TV in my drama The Granton Star Cause in 1996″. This drama, broadcast by Channel 4, contains perhaps more c-words than any other programme, though it was, of course, far from the first instance of the word being broadcast.

The premiere appearance of ‘cunt’ in the press is a matter of equally contentious debate. When, in 1988, Mike Gatting publicly criticised a cricket umpire with the phrase “fucking, cheating cunt”, The Independent was the only newspaper to publish his comments unexpurgated. Bill Bryson has since claimed that this marked “the first time that cunt had appeared in a British newspaper” (1990), as has Ian Jack: “”Cunt” as well as “fucking” was included, perhaps the word’s first appearance in a British newspaper” (2002).

In fact, ‘cunt’ had appeared in The Times the year before, in an article by Bernard Levin. Levin criticised the common newspaper practice of asterisking swearwords, commenting sarcastically that “If the words are printed with only their initial letters, followed by asterisks […] they are at once and entirely robbed of their dreadful power” (1987). He then went on to quote unasterisked lines from the poem V:

“Aspirations, cunt! Folk on t’fucking dole
‘ave got about as much scope to aspire
above the shit they’re dumped in, cunt, as coal
aspires to be chucked on t’fucking fire. […]
Yer’ve given yerself toffee, cunt. Who needs
yer fucking poufy words. Ah write mi own” (Tony Harrison, 1985).

Levin’s article marks the one and only occasion that The Times has printed ‘cunt’ uncensored. David Glencross, writing in The Observer, was nonplussed by the article: “When an extract [from V was] printed in The Times, embedded in an article by Bernard Levin, the social fabric of the nation survive[d]” (1987), though Levin’s fellow Times columnist Ronald Butt castigated him for “[choosing] to reproduce a verse of unmitigated obscenity […] in what was clearly a gratuitous taboo-breaking exercise” (1987).

V was also published unexpurgated in The Independent shortly after The Times’s extracts, with a warning regarding its “SEXUALLY EXPLICIT LANGUAGE” (Blake Morrison, 1987). These extracts in The Times and The Independent came months before Mike Gatting’s cricket outburst, though they were overshadowed by the controversy surrounding V’s recital on television.

However, the very first usage of ‘cunt’ in a newspaper occurred as long ago as the 1970s, more than a decade before The Times and The Independent were brave enough to print it. The word appears in a 1974 interview with Marianne Faithfull, published in The Guardian. The writer, Janet Watts, introduces Faithfull as a woman who is not afraid to speak her mind: “She used not to read what people wrote, because she got to believe it: now, she’s easy about it, relaxing into words I think she thinks I can’t print”. Watts then quotes Faithfull’s reactions to negative reviews: “If they think I’m a whoo-er [sic.], they’re entitled to say it: just as I’m entitled to think they’re a cunt for saying it”.

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