Over the years, I have worked with journalists, printers and police. So you can imagine that I have been subjected to plenty of banter.
Let's turn the clock back to December 1st, 1976, and the infamous interview between the Sex Pistols and Bill Grundy which resulted in notoriety for the group and the sack for Grundy who admitted that he was drunk.
Reading a transcript of that interview, it all just seems pathetic and childish. Grundy was goading Rotten and his mob who were rising to the bait and realising here was some prime time exposure to really illustrate what anti establishment droogs they were (droogs = young men belonging to a gang. The word comes from the book and film Clockwork Orange)
It's just over 46 years since that interview - when all the newspapers gave hundreds of column inches to shock horror stories about how grotesque the programme had been and how offensive the barrage of four letter words had been.
Thing is there were three f---s, two s---s and one bastard in this shock jock prgramme. And that all pales into insignificance when compared to the violence and four letter barrage that litter so called mainstream drama today. I didn't count the number of times the f word occurred in Happy Valley at the weekend but it was well into double figures. Other so called gritty Northern dramas have the same affliction - if you call it an affliction of course.
Then there was a Channel Four drama which not only had some unsavoury action but some very unsavoury and sexist language. I didn't catch its name but gave up on it after about five minutes.
I'm not going to do a Mary Whitehouse or Lord Longford on you here but I do worry that these series are being lapped up by impressionable youngsters whose vocabulary sometimes seems to be strictly limited - or am I being too puritanical?
I do have to say that one Channel Four show did make me laugh though. Here is the advertising blurb for it.
Carmel is a businesswoman and went to Poo HQ, the base of the show, to get help for extreme bloating and explosive farts. She said: "You don't know if you are farting or if it is not just going to be a fart and it is going to be something else".
Apparently cutting out crisps and mango has helped Carmel no end.
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Spent all of yesterday with granddaughter Poppy. She had been sick at school on Tuesday and school rules state that pupils who have been sick have to stay away from school for 48 hours even if they are feeling fine, as Poppy was.
So I decided to turn into a school teacher for the day. I couldn't believe her voracious appetite for knowledge. She only turned eight on Monday but would you believe we constructed her family tree going back numerous generations. We then did some desk top publishing, writing and designing a newssheet and also the start of a monthly newsletter on our garden. She learnt how to use a tripod (grandad I thought a tripod had four feet - no Pops it's called a tripod because it has three - oh yes), took numerous photographs, some of which appear with this blog, learnt how to use the camera timer and much much more.
We also downloaded and cropped photos, did some maths and English and she gave me a lesson on Vikings and Saxons. Oh and we did some internet clothes shopping as well although she did say that my taste in clothes isn't good. I would have to agree although I would say that I don't really have any taste in clothes at all.
Today it will be jigsaws, some quizzes and more genealogy amongst other things. Enjoy her photos.