Yiddos! Yiddos! 

So, today, West Ham play Spurs at White Hart Lane. So, it's the first game between them since the debate about the (chanting) use of the words 'yid' and 'yiddo'. So, one thing I've not seen in all the discussion is anything about when and how 'yid' came to be used by Spurs fans. 

So?

So . . . I happened to be there, I think, around the very time it started. I wrote about it in my book on swearing, Filthy English. Here is the section . . . it's the end of a chapter on racial slurs and I've been discussing the reclaiming of nigger and paki by, well, people of african and south asian descent who chose to judo throw a racist word and declare themselves to be, well, niggers and pakis.

I first came across another reappropriation early in the morning of Wednesday, 9 May 1984. Very early. I was on a coach, one coach in a giant convoy of coaches – an invasion of coaches – which was snaking its way through the London dawn towards Dover. And from there to Ostend harbour, the medieval city of Bruges and, finally, the Brussels suburb of Anderlecht.

By the time the coach retraced its route, almost twenty-four sleepless hours later, there had been a fatal stabbing, some violent scuffles and a 1–1 draw between Spurs and Anderlecht in the first leg of the UEFA Cup Final. On our return, as we disembarked from the ferry at Dover, we would be greeted by a dozen or so reporters, a flash of bulbs and a predictability of questions. That was nearly a day in the future, though. That would be the final stages of the ritualistic sequence of events for English football followers venturing to European away games in the 1980s: long coach journey, drink, more drink, fear, anger, confused local citizens, drink, boring match, violence, drink, long coach journey, home, hangover, work.

But, for now, in the grubby London dawn, hope and anticipation were still trumping memory, knowledge and bitter experience. For everyone on the coach apart from me, that is. They were actual fans. I was merely working. I was there on the coach to write about the experience of being on the coach. I was doing the leg-work for a piece about travelling with football fans, at a time when travelling English football fans were ‘the scourge of Europe’, a ‘blight on the beautiful game’, ‘a rabble of hooligans’ etc. That was no mere loudmouthing editorialising either. A year later, in another suburb of Brussels, at another European final, thirty-nine Juventus fans would be killed.

No-one on the coach was interested in me, not in the slightest. They were interested in being together. They were a group, a small crowd. They sang, they chanted – in dawn’s early light. They were teenagers, mostly. All boys, of course.

Polite mostly, not at all hooligany and, I soon discovered, nearly all Jewish. I probably would have figured that out anyway, for a variety of reasons, not least the fact that my own sons are half-Jewish. But I didn’t need to. The chants did it for me. This was their favourite: If you’re proud to come from Israel, clap your hands. (Clap, clap, clap.) If you’re proud to come from Israel, clap your hands. (Clap, clap, clap. Pause.) Yiddooos! Yiddooos!

I’d not heard it before. I had to stifle my giggles. I knew that none of them were Israelis. I could hear that in their London accents. The Israel thing was part joke, part identification with something powerful that was theirs – and not, say, Arsenal fans’. Tottenham was a ‘Jewish club’ and they were set on making that clear – with the assertive brittleness you’d expect of minority group teenagers.

How long Spurs has been a ‘Jewish club’ – and why – has never really been that clear. It only gets the most passing of mentions in Hunter Davies’ 1972 book on the club, The Glory Game. Even then, it’s half in code. Davies is talking to Morris Keston, a ‘Hanger-on’ as he disparagingly refers to the club’s wealthy fan. Why do so many of the Hangers-on seem to be from the rag trade? he asks, somewhat disingenuously. ‘There’s always been a big following amongst Jewish people in the East End for clubs like Tottenham and Arsenal,’ replies Keston.

Not just a Tottenham thing, then. There’s no further reference to the subject in either the 1985 or 1990 editions, either. My guess is simply that it’s the nearest club to Stamford Hill. And that its fans’ self-conscious Jewishness only started to emerge around the time I found myself sitting on a smelly coach to Belgium.
This ‘yiddoos’ thing was interesting. I’d never heard it used by Jews before, only by racists and other teams’ fans. This was the most glorious, self-conscious act of reappropriation. As rappers and hip-hoppers would take over nigger, as Coloured People and People of Colour and homosexual academia would construct (and deconstruct) queer theory, so these teenage Jewish boys had taken an insult and turned it, made a double agent of it. It was as if gypsies took to calling themselves gypos.†

Over the next few years, all Tottenham fans, not just the Jewish ones, took to calling themselves yiddoos or yids. When Jurgen Klinsmann joined the club, they chanted ‘Jurgen was a German but now he’s a Jew’, to the tune of the Sherman brothers’ Mary Poppins song, ‘Chim Chim Cheree’. Other European clubs in Europe – Bayern Munich, FK Austria Wien and AS Roma, for example – are similarly ‘Jewish’, for various historical and cultural reasons. Fans of Amsterdam’s Ajax wear red Stars of David and spread giant blue and white Israeli flags across their terraces. These Spurs’ fans chants and songs were never mentioned by commentators or football writers but you could hear the chants at every game. Why didn’t they mention it? Because it would mean using the word ‘yid’ or ‘yiddo’. They worried – probably rightly – that just saying it or writing it would inevitably draw them into uncomfortable areas.

This reappropriation unsettled the racist mind, of course. Slowly, over time, other fans stopped calling them Tottenham yids. Not because they didn’t still think of them that way and not because the word’s meaning had changed but because the word’s association had changed. The thought may have remained the same but the word itself had been flipped, like a pancake. What had been bad had been made good. There’s no power left in an insult when the person you’re trying to insult has ironized it into a proud self-description. At least, you’d think so. But it’s not so. Chelsea fans have long chanted: ‘Gas a Jew, Jew Jew, put him in the oven, cook him through.’ There is also a story that when Manchester City fans sang a song about foreskins, Spurs fans pulled out their penises and waved them at the Mancunians. Other fans, West Ham fans, in particular, still talk (and chant) about Tottenham yids. And their voices and hearts are still filled with hatred. As with nigger, it’s the thought that counts, not the word.

† Well, maybe not quite. ‘Gypsy’ is a result of a misplacing of that group’s origins in Egypt rather than India. Yid is, at least, a Jewish word. Similar to the German Jude, it’s derived ultimately from Judah (or Yehuda), the three-thousand-year-old name for the mountainous area which runs along one edge of the Dead Sea south from Jerusalem towards the Sinai desert. It was the bit ruled over by King David. The northern section is now usually referred to as the West Bank. It was Jews who first called themselves yids. Leo Rosten, in The Joys of Yiddish, says they pronounced it to rhyme with ‘need’, though. Only racists rhymed it with ‘did’.


So . . ? 

James fucking Bond, part two

When I wrote about Judi Dench, as M, swearing in Skyfall, I had no idea she had previous in this field. Considerable previous. 



Thanks to Chris Coates, I can now share some of Dame Judi's extensive contributions to the UK swearing corpus.

One Both Mathew MacFadyen and Keira Knightley have watched her on set, embroidering swear words on cushions. You Are a Fucking Shit. You Are A Cunt. That kind of (fucking) thing.

Two She played the mother in David Hare's Amy's View at the National in 1997. Knowing the playwright was notoriously touchy about critics etc, she embroidered him a cushion. (Embroidery clearly photo-finishes with swearing in the Dench psyche.) It read: Fuck 'em, fuck 'em, fuck 'em, fuck 'em.

So . . . 

One JD is clearly something of an unrepentent JD.

Two Given that when JD swears in Skyfall, she's in a dark room looking down, my guess is she's now using her own embroidered cushions as secret cue-cards.

Michael O’Leary, twat or cunt? A philological con-undrum


I quote Carole Cadwallar from her piece on the latest piece of ridiculous flim-flammery to emerge from the mouth of Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary. 



Customers had complained about having to pay £60 if they’d forgotten to print their own ticket. What did O’Leary have to say to them? ‘We say quite politely to those passengers, bugger off.’

And so, in The Observer, Carole Cadwallar used similarly base language to describe the Ryanair boss. ‘Michael O’Leary is a twat . . . He is . . . And Ryanair . . . is a twattish airline.’

Ah now, Carole, I beg to question. Is it fair to call O’Leary a twat? Is it an accurate characterisation? Is it reasonable to compare him — and his airline — to a piece of female genitalia? And then there is the most vital question of all: if Michael O’Leary is a vagina, is twat the best word in the context?

Some possible alternatives can be easily dismissed. He is clearly no pussy — there is nothing meek about him (or his airline). Nor is he a fanny — certainly there’s no fannying about in the Ryanair universe.

No, there are only two possible vagina words for the airline boss: twat or cunt. And I’d challenge Cadwaller’s choice of twat. I think most people would agree that it’s the weaker word and that a twat’s twattishness is the result of stupidity or, even more likely, laziness. A twat is an English equivalent of a French con — foolish rather than malevolent. The French play and film, Le Diner Des Cons, 

 

was translated Dinner for Schmucks. Not for cunts. Though when they showed it in France, it was translated - confusingly, I would have thought - back to the same title as the original French film

 

When children’s author Jacqueline Wilson called someone a twat in her 2008 book, My Sister Jodie, that is surely the sense she was after. Someone that is useless, a drain on humanity but, really, they don’t do it on purpose. Someone doing something stupid like, say, using the word ‘twat’ in a book for children.

A cunt, though, knows what they are doing. And I find it hard to believe that O’Leary doesn’t know what he’s doing. In fact, I’m sure that his consciously obstructive rules for his airline are, more than anything, a way of getting free publicity. If I told people they couldn’t come in my house without a pre-printed ticket, then tried to charge them for printing it, I would, I reckon, be called a cunt for doing it. So O’Leary is clearly more cunt than twat. I quote myself, from my book Filthy English.

‘Cunt has only recently been used as an insult - since the late 19th century roughly. In that time, though, it has acquired unparalleled potency and pungency. I'd say there was an implication - an accusation, probably - of active malevolence in calling someone a cunt. Which is, to my mind, the reason it's seen as such a terrible word. Not because it represents vaginas and not just because it represents real hatred but because it represents real hatred allied to vaginas. So it's a violent repudiation of all our origins.’

PS1 All things considered, though, I don’t think O’Leary really is a cunt. He’s not nasty enough for that. (Nasty being another vagina word, of course.) Matter of fact, I’d use a native Irish phrase for him. I’d say he was a cute hoor. And if you want to know more about cute hoors, you’ll have to buy my book — now available, and selling well, as an eBook.

PS2 You don’t have to go via the satanic Amazon either. Both paperback and eBook are available via Waterstones.com, Play.com, Foyles.co.uk, blackwell.co.uk . . . and any good online bookstore.

The first fucking James Bond film

It’s a couple of weeks back now but I went to see the new James Bond, Skyfall, on a wet Wednesday afternoon on half-term in Penzance. It was packed.

Before I get on to Bond, though, let me wander off for a bit with something about the cinema, the Savoy. It’s the oldest in Britain, I think. Last time I was there, when they showed the bit before the film about how taping movies etc is an act of piracy, a member of the audience stood up and, in the deepest, roundest Cornish accent ‘Aaarr, that it be.’ (I’ve told that story before but in person. I’ve no idea if it worked in print.)

And so to James ‘fucking’ Bond. Well, actually, Judi ‘fucking’ Dench. Have you seen the film yet? Did you catch it? Mrs/Ms/Miss M, at a dark moment, says: ‘I fucked up, didn’t I?’ She doesn’t say it clearly, she mumbles it.

And my point is? That no review — not that I’ve seen anyway — has commented on it. Why did they put it in the film then? My guess is for two reasons. One, I can tell everyone about but the other — which is the real one, I reckon — is something that can only be revealed to people who’ve actually seen the film.

Reason one. It was a straightforward way of emphasising the gravity of the moment. Nothing else would have achieved the same impact. Which shows that, however publicly acceptable ‘fuck’ has become, it still does retain power.

Reason two. Because it is a Rubicon of a moment. A river has been crossed. A moment has happened. It’s an indication that things will never be the same again. It’s an emotional harbinger of something that happens later in the film. Something tough and irrevocable. But I can’t tell you what it is. (If you’ve seen the movie, I don’t think you’ll have too many problems figuring it out.) It has nothing to do with sex, though, just with the more usual modern meaning of ‘fucked’.

Next The next Greatest Song In The World Ever . . . Today. This one doesn’t even have words.

What the British ambassador really said . . .
Last week, there was a brief and minor fuss about a tweet by the British ambassador in Buenos Aires. Reports seemed to indicate that he had repeated a Chilean football fans’ anti-Argentinian chant which referred, disparagingly, to the Falklands war.

Actually he didn’t. He merely referred to it, extremely obliquely — and wittily. The joke was that, by going to see the Argentina vs Chile international in Buenos Aries, he would find out something new about the reasons behind Argentina’s invasion of the Falklands.

Even the chant itself wasn’t well reported in the press. It was always printed in its English translation: 'Argentines, you faggots, you lost the Malvinas for being dumb assholes'.

Which doesn’t sound much like an effective football chant, does it? For one thing, it has no rhythm. For another, it has no rhyme.

The original, though, has both of course. ‘Argentinos, maricones, les quitaron las Malvinas por huevones’. The rhythm, I guess, not having actually heard it, is the same one as something like: together, united, we shall never be defeated.

How does it actually translate? I asked my friend/colleague Damian in Buenos Aires. Though he has no interest in football, he became used to these kind of questions when I was writing my book Filthy English.

The first problematic word is ‘maricones’. Superficially, it is easy to translate. It’s the standard hispanic world word for homosexuals — hence the American faggots in the newspapers. But, Damian pointed out, to me, it overwhelmingly refers to cowardice. That’s just not there in any English words I can think of for homosexual. Poof, poofter, woofter, shirt-lifter, uphill gardener etc etc . . . Lots of sneering but no intimations of cowardliness.

Interesting, then, that hispanic homosexuals are cowards while anglo ones aren’t. It says, I guess, more about hispanic and anglo heterosexuals than it does about homosexuals. So, given that it’s likely that racial and group slurs represent not a true image of the denigrated group but rather an externalisation of an internal piece of something, what does that say about hispanic heterosexual men? That they are placing some cowardly part of themselves on homosexuals?

Certainly, there could be something of that kind going on in the Chilean anti-Argentinian chant. Argentinians are a bolshie  bunch and Chileans quite probably resent them in this way or that. (I’ve no idea if that’s true. But if, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, you can’t believe one evidently false thing before lunch, where is the fun in life?)

The other problematic word is ‘huevones’. Dumb assholes is a terrible translation of that. Obviously, it has nothing to do with bums but everything to do with eggs. As in that breakfast dish ‘huevos rancheros’. But eggs? It’s the Chilean slang for testicles. It’s a common equation. Hebrew uses the same metaphor. Not Argentinian Spanish, though. There, the reference is the same as in English, to balls: boludo.

So how to translate huevones? In this context, it clearly refers to stupidity — which asshole doesn’t. So I favour the Irish bollix. As in: you complete bollix. A cousin, of course, of the English: he/she/they bollocksed that right up. (NB the interpolation of the qualifier ‘right’ highlights the importance of rhythm and redundancy in quality swearing.)

But there’s more. Bollix also implies a level of friendship — and so does huevon, which can also be translated as mate or pal. As can boludo, which is a common form of address to a friend. As huevon is huevo plus the emphasis-suffix of -on, an even better (though non-swearing) English equivalent might be matey.

So, what the British ambassador really referring to? I can’t get any rhythm or rhyme to it but a more accurate, if completely unevocative (and therefore meaning-lite) translation would be: 'Argentinians, you cowards, you lost the Falklands because you are complete and utter bollix'.

One more thing. Don’t think the Argentinians are likely to have been that intimidated by the Chilean chant. As anyone who has seen that extraordinary scene in Secrets In Their Eyes will know, Buenos Aires football crowds are, well, let’s say lively. Also, Argentinians certainly can turn it on when swearing and are no slouches at cross-border insults.

I quote myself, from my book, Filthy English.

Length, detail and specificity are all notable features of Argentinian swearing. An example from a popular film. ‘Negro de mierda y la concha de tu puta madre boliviana, parte de una generación sometida por los blancos; hijo de la guasca rejuntada de la zanja de un quilombo de travestis paraguayos. Sabes porque éste ispa está así? Por los negros, cabezas negras, analfabetos, peronistas y engominados como vos.’

This translates as ‘Nigger of shit and cunt of your Bolivian whore of a mother – one of a generation subjugated by whites; son of semen collected from the ditch outside a Paraguayan transvestites’ brothel. Do you know why this country is like it is? Because of the niggers, blackheads, illiterates, Peronistas and men like you who use too much hair gel.’

Gomina? It’s what old-fashioned Argentinian men put on their hair. Buenos Aires waiters, for example.

If you want to know what this fantastic swearfest sounds like, it’s here . . .

Colour vs genitalia: you decide

A belated addition to the stirrings around John Terry and Ashley Cole . . .

So: fucking black cunt from JT and bunch of twats from Cashley. There seemed no comment on the fact that, in both cases, the final insult/swear was vaginal/vulval.

Which, I guess, means it would have been okay if JT had merely pronounced his opponent a fucking cunt. Which leads to other questions: what if his opponent had called him a fucking white cunt? or he’d called him a fucking n-word cunt? (not nigger but n-word) or a f-wording n-word c-word?

Still, the kick-up did finally clarify all doubt over the question: what is the worst thing in the world, a person of African descent or the female genital organ? Black people are, we now know for certain, even worse than vaginas.

Cover your ears.

Next Apple computers, caviar and me

It's Wiggo go-go time again . . .

Everyone's favourite mod is at it again. He even manages to get swearing into an apologia pro vita sua in the Guardian. 

July 14, 2012

He is explaining why he didn't believe in taking performance-enhancing drugs. (What? Call yourself a mod, mate? Not even a black bomber or two?)

I would not want to end up sitting in a room with all that hanging on me, thinking: 'Shit, I don't want anyone to find out.'

Next up The mystery of the British Airways London Calling ad

More Wiggo words 

Following our swhero (does that even make sense?) to the finish line in Paris . . .

July 11, 2012 Shit

'I'm not just some shit rider who has just come from nowhere.' An explanation of why he was rejecting, yet again, online suggestions that he was half-cyclist, half-chemistry set.

Next That Xmas thing I said I'd post . . .

Fucking cycling

Football aside, the only other sport that holds my attention for more than a moment is the Tour de France. Not road race cycling. Just the Tour de France. Enough is enough.

Watching the tour this year — and more importantly, reading the press conference reports — I have decided that I could apply a swearing algorithm to this sporting contest, too.

It's a different one, though. Rather than using it as a way of comparing two matched competitors, I am using it to assess just one competitor — British rider Bradley Wiggins.*

Mr Wiggins — Wiggo, I think, to the racing fancy — is leading the field as the race reaches the halfway point. He is outperforming every other English rider who has ever ridden the Tour.

He also gives great interview. Almost invariably, his replies feature swearing. Not just any swearing either but inventive stuff — nothing fancy or strikingly original, mostly drawn from the classic English repertoire, but still fun and expressive. It expresses the richness of the man expressing it. He is honest, forthright, direct, as far from the inanity of most footballers as you could hope for.

(He also has the most fantastic sideburns/sideboards. Bugger's grips, in the parlance.)

So, to start with anyway, I will be keeping you up-to-date with Wiggo's swears.

Here are some to be going on with . . .

1. July 8, 2012 Fucking wankers, shit, arses

Invited to offer his opinion on people who claimed that bike racing was still more a matter of chemistry than talent or effort, he replied: ‘Honestly they’re just fucking wankers. I can’t be doing with people like that. It justifies their own bone idleness . . .because they can’t ever imagine applying themselves to anything in their lives. And it’s easy for them to sit under a pseudonym on Twitter and write that kind of shit rather than get off their arses and apply themselves and work hard at something and achieve something.'

2. July 10, 2012 Shit fight

Asked about his chances of winning the Tour, he replied: 'We expect this to be a shit-fight for the next couple of weeks. That's how we've prepared for it and that's what cycling's about."

3. July 7, 2012 Ass-wipe, cunt  

So . . . as the leader of the Tour has to do a press conference every day, I look forward to more Wiggo words. Let's hope his swearing talent powers him all the way to the finish in les Champs-Elysee and that he becomes Britain's first victor in the race. As the French would say, putain!

* Side point. Isn't that the most wonderful of names? Bradley Wiggins. It sounds like a name from the Simpsons, one dreamed up by Matt Groening to tease the English. 

Next Christmas 2012, my first sighting

Oh, well . . .

All I can say is: fuck it! Or: cazzo! strongo! conño! hijo de puta! etc etc . . .

(If explanation for that burst of filthy european is necessary, see previous posts below.)

And finally . . . the Euroswearing 2012 final

But first . . . a little maths. My swearing algorithm has correctly predicted the outcome of each of the six matches on which I’ve applied it. That is, clearly, way above chance. Exactly how far above?

Well, I don’t bet. I have no moral attitude to gamblers*. I enjoy their company, even go to casinos with them occasionally. But I don’t gamble. Even when I intend to place a bet — because I’m certain I’ll win and want to prove it, rather than in search of profits — I always forget to do it. It’s not even that I’m reacting against a family of gamblers or anything. As I say, gamblers tend to be good company. Up to a point, anyway. Their conversation tends to the, er, somewhat limited — or, to be kinder, focussed. Still, that’s what happens, I guess, when you spend your life putting your money where your mouth is.

So, what did the bookies have to tell me about my ‘winning streak’? I took the kickoff odds — from Ladbroke’s, I think, see, I really am that uninterested in the details of the betting world. I then calculated what would have been the return if i’d put £10 on each match. Result: on a £60 outlay, I’d have ended up with £96.65. Result. Well, kind of. It would have paid for dinner for one, I guess.

If I had actually been betting, I would have done what I was always do — or at least claim I would do if I ever got round to placing a bet. That is, I would have kept half of the winnings and added that to the next bet. Even I, though, could see that wouldn’t make much difference — or me much money. So I did a different calculation — the kind of optimism-based one that real punters guide their lives by. I imagined I’d placed a tenner on every game and reinvested it all as I went along. Result: on a £60 outlay, with constant reinvestment, I would have made £623. Result. In my dreams, anyway.

Nearly all that profit, by the way, came in the last game of the six, when my algorithm predicted Italy’s triumph over Germany. Bear that in mind as you read on. So . . .

Italy vs Spain

Let me recap. Basic national swears first. Italian: strongo! Spanish: hijo de puta! Nothing to choose there, is there. So let’s look at their alternative national swears. Italian: cazzo! Prick, that is, and carrying something of its force. Spanish: coño! Cunt but used so frequently it just doesn’t carry the same weight — Mexicans think Spaniards use it so much they call them los coños. Which puts Italy slightly ahead.

How about blow-jobs? Well, the Italian l’arte bolognese — ie it’s a speciality of the inhabitants of Bologna. (And, I know I cracked this joke before but . . . it does add a new twist on spaghetti bolognese.) Spanish? Butifarra — sausage. Again, the Italians have it.

So let’s separate it — how else? — on having sex between a woman’s breasts.  The Italian/Spanish approach is detailed in Filthy English, page 199.

When an Italian wants to discuss what in English English is called a tit-wank, he talks about una spagnola, a Spanish thing. If it's a Spaniard talking about sex between a woman's breasts, it's una cubana - a Cuban thing.

(An aside. If nothing else, the sullenness of the English phrase, tit-wank, would by itself explain why England did not progress further in the tournament.)

Again, I make that a draw. Blaming another nation for your own polymorphous desires is a human eternal.

We have a result, though, don’t we. It’s Italy to win.

How much would that make if the latest odds were applied to my (imaginary) winnings so-far? Well, the best I can find (after ten seconds googling) are 29/10. The bet is £623 plus £10 = £633. Which would give me (have given me, that is), a final total of £2468.70 on an outlay of £70. Now that would buy me a dinner or two.

* I do, though, have a sense of outrage about encouraging people to gamble. I get genuinely furious at Ray Winstone’s disembodied head appearing at half-time in TV football matches to tempt loose-pocketed punters. Often, I shout at the screen — something I don’t do much otherwise. He should be embarrassed at his avarice. Really embarrassed. Almost as embarrassed as he should be for his performance — accent and acting, both — in that Scorsese terrible film, The Departed. How terrible? It won an Oscar. Yes, that terrible.

Euroswearing 2012: the first semi-final

But first . . . a little trumpet-blowing. So far, I should remind my many readers, the swearing algorithm has correctly predicted the results of all four matches assessed.

Yes, I know hubris is a dish best enjoyed cold-heartedly — and I expect, even welcome, being slapped about when I do fail. Still, I’m enjoying my moment of triumph.

And, as there are now only three matches to go, that means I am already over the 50-50 line. If I could always do better than chance and consistently bet money that way, I would — eventually — own the whole world.

Enough of that, though. To tonight’s head-to-head.

Spain vs Portugal

In the previous round, I gave assessments of both countries’ swearing talents and capacities. So first I will briefly revisit what I uncovered there.

Portugal first. The national swearing standard is filho da puta! — which I spelt wrong last time, putting de where I meant da. (Oh well. De-da, de-da.)

Now Spain. It’s hijo de puta!

Both phrase translate as son of a whore. So no way of separating the two Iberian cultures there. Still, I’ll pause to consider the underlying meaning of the insult — which has no direct English equivalent. I quote myself, Filthy English, page 141.

Telling someone they're a hijo de puta means they were born of a woman who had so much sex with so many different men that, therefore - and this is the point and punch of the slur - they are effectively fatherless, illegitimate both literally and metaphorically.

It’s an insult about social exile. Bastard is the closest English equivalent. A bastard, though, can know his or her father — even be acknowledged by him. So bastard not a social but a legal insult: a bastard can’t inherit the farm. Just keep that in mind when one of tonight’s combatants shouts hijo de puta/filho da puta at an ‘enemy’. Or ‘team mate’.

With no way to separate the two countries there, I’ll move straight to a match-decider. I chose two football-derived pieces of filthy Iberian as the weapons of choice.

Portugal first: estou com o Benfica. Translation: I am a supporter of Benfica — the famous Lisbon football club. Eh? It’s a woman speaking. She is — euphemistically — informing you that she is currently menstruating. Eh? Benfica play in red shirts — cf the English ‘Arsenal are playing at home’.

Now Spain: two samples, both regional. First one from the north-east of the country. Filthy English, page 207.

A citizen of Barcelona, wishing to suggest that someone was what a similarly angry black American would call a motherfucker, might call them a 'Hugo Sanchez'. It's a football analogy. Hugo Sanchez was a Mexican-born striker who played for Real Madrid, Barcelona's great rival. He helped them win five consecutive league titles, 1986-90, scoring 207 goals, a ratio of 1.37 per game, each one celebrated with a somersault. For a Barcelona supporter, therefore, a Hugo Sanchez is about the worst thing a man could be.

Now one from the centre of the county, the capital. Filthy English page 168.

Atletico Madrid's ultras are among the world's most perniciously racist football fans. Their behaviour at a 2008 Champions League match resulted in FIFA threatening the club with having to play future matches away from not just its home ground but from Madrid. One of these ultras' favourite chants is, to the tune of the Spanish national anthem, 'Fuera, fuera, maricones, negros, Vascos, Catalanes'.

Death, death to homosexuals, blacks, inhabitants of the Basque region, even before citizens of Barcelona and its hinterland.

Now that really is what you call an insult. My only question is: are the targets of the ultras death-wishes in ascending or descending order? Who do they hate more, homosexuals or Barcelona supporters?

Still, I think it’s clear. The Spanish use of football in their curses is simply superior. And that is why they will win tonight. No other reason. Believe me. Trust me.

Tomorrow The second semi-final, Germany vs Italy.

Euroswearing 2012 QF4

First, though, a little smugness. Last night’s 2-0 victory for Spain gave another uptick for my completely scientific swearing algorithm. So far, that’s three out of three. And so to tonight’s contest . . .

4. England vs Italy

I have, of course, washed away all personal considerations. For the moment, at least, I will focus on the Irish part of my self. (See recent postings for an explanation of that previous sentence.)

I have decided to follow a similar format to the one used for the previous quarter final. Two rounds, with each country given the opportunity to put forward its best swear, followed, if necessary, be a final decider — ideally, an independent view of some sort.

I’ll start with the basic as yesterday: each country’s archetypal swear. In English, obviously, it’s fuck!. In Italian, it’s probably stronzo! Shit, that is.

Verdict: As in the previous quarter final, it’s effectively decided by the stress. Fuck! is a stressed phoneme. Stronzo! has the stress on the first phoneme and, therefore, a feminine ending. Again, try yesterday’s test — a variant, anyway. Peer into the future and receive the information that — whether you are an English or Italian supporter — your team has lost. First shout stronzo! Now shout fuck! There really is no contest, is there? England pulls ahead.

Again as yesterday, I’ll consider oral sex. Given that cocksucker is essentially American, the English standard here is blow job. An Italian favourite? L’arte bolognese — a speciality of the women of Bologna.

Verdict: Well, the English is not just unevocative and unimaginative but displays such ignorance of the mechanisms of the actual process that it seems more than likely that the coiner of the word had no personal knowledge of the activity. The Italian phrase, meanwhile, not only elevates the matter to the realms of art but throws in an intranational slur. Given, as is often said, that the Italian football is primarily a continuation by other means of the wars between Renaissance city states, it is hard to exaggerate the import of intranational slurs in Italian civic society. Also, it throws a whole new light on how to cook an authentic ragu bolognese. Italy draw level.

And so to the tie-breaker. External judges. England first. Well, Italian students in London are, I’m told by their tutors, staggered by the level and intensity of swearing in London. Impressed, too. And so to the Italians. Or rather one Italian, in particular. Filthy English, page 25, details the first printed appearance of the word fuck . . .

. . . in A Worlde of Wordes or more copious and exact dictionarie in Italian and English (1598), compiled by John Florio - Anglo-Italian writer, translator, royal language tutor, possibly the model for Holofernes in Love's Labours Lost, probably a friend of Shakespeare's, most likely the man from whom the playwright acquired the rich knowledge of Italian life and manners that's on show in Romeo and Juliet. Some even think Florio was Shakespeare.
In this precursor of modern dictionaries, Florio offered fuck as one of five alternative translations of fottere, the Italian cousin of the French foutre — the word that, in Henry IV, Shakespeare has Pistol shout out, 'A foutra for the world.'

Verdict. It’s clear, isn’t it, that while modern Italians are — suitably — impressed by the filth of London streets, it was them who got there first. It was an Italian (well, an Anglo-Italian) who introduced us (in print, anyway) to fuck. No Italians, no fuck. So my scientific algorithm predicts: Italy wins and England gets fuck-all. Or should that be fuck-nothing?

PS More confirmation of my algorithms predictive power. Accounts of Nasri's post-match statement to the press indicate that he told them to go fuck themselves. That is, he had to use English not French to get his point across.

Next Back for the first semi on Wednesday (Portugal vs Spain) but before that I might post something about Apple, Derrida and the beautiful game.

Euroswearing QF3 France vs Spain

But first . . .

Yesterday’s result, a 4-2 victory for Germany over Greece, was another correct call by my completely scientific swearing algorithm. That makes it two out of two. Let’s see how today’s quarter final goes . . .

3. France vs Spain

Let’s start with the basic match-up: the archetypal, most popular word in the two adjacent countries. In French, it’s putain! In Spanish, it’s hijo de puta! So French whore! And Spanish: son of a whore!

Verdict one: Putain has a demonstrably better rhythm to it. Partly it’s a matter of the masculine ending — ie stressed phoneme. Try it at home. Hit your thumb with a hammer while shouting putain! Now try it again while shouting hijo de puta! It’s a clear French victory.

Now let’s move on to oral sex. A top French phrase is parler sur le micro — speaking into a microphone. The Spanish counter with a butifara — a reference to sausage-eating.

Verdict two: It’s an earthy act so, surely, an earthy metaphor is preferable to one which depends on having a recording studio on hand. Spanish quotidianism triumphs, as ever, over French abstraction.

That’s one each. And so to the tie-breaker. As it’s one-one between the countries themselves, I’ll give it to the English to decide, via their insult view of the two nations.

First Spain. Dagos. Page 235 of Filthy English:

From the Spanish Christian name, Diego. The word dates back to 1700.

Now France. Frogs Page 237 of Filthy English:

Why frogs? The usual explanation is that it derives from a francophone taste for eating reptilian limbs. However, before it referred to the French it was a seventeenth-century English slur at the Dutch - who were then the major enemies and whose low-slung wetland of a country would genuinely have been very froggy. So it's also possible that when the French took their place as Britain's favourite enemy, the racial slur moved over with them.

Verdict three: The result is obvious isn’t it. Not only is the Spanish slur older but it’s always been theirs. The French slur is just a Dutch slur that English, lazily, slapped over on to the French.

So it’s Spain to overcome their northern neighbours. Come on, los coños. (Yes, it does translate as ‘cunts’. More on this topic — whether it’s the spics or the frogs that get through.)

Next Italy vs England, of course

Euroswears 2012, QF2

But first . . . yesterday’s game. My prediction, based on a scientific and rigorous analysis of national swears, was victory for Portugal. And so it was. That makes it one out of one. Let’s see how we do today.

2. Germany vs Greece

Greece first. Ancient then modern. Old Greeks, Athenians, in particular, pretty much invented the idea of the national slur. To them, everyone who wasn’t a Greek was a barbarian. Filthy English, page 237:

This was a judgement based on a Greek view of the sound of non-Greek languages - they sounded like baa-baa-baa. Mexicans are making the same judgement when they refer to Americans as gringos - it's Mexican Spanish for gibberish.

That was then, though. What about now? The central word to modern Greek swearing is malaka. It’s to Greek what fuck! is to English, putain! is to French and kurwa! is to Polish. Malaka is fit for all purposes. Translation? Well, fuck=sexual intercourse. Putain=whore. Kurwa=whore. Malaka=masturbator. Maybe there is no link between those words and the accompanying  national psyches. Or maybe there is.

Now for Germany. Its swearing really is big on shit. Scheisse! etc etc. Filthy English, page 125:

Anscheissen means to shit on, literally and figuratively. It also means to scold, to berate, to tell off, to bollock or even to report. Not just any old reporting, though, but a particularly kind of reporting, as in Er schiss mich bei der Polizei an - he reported me to the police. Bescheissen, which also translates as to shit on, means to cheat. Beschissen is shitty, fucked-up. A Klugscheisser is a smarty pants, not as clever as he talks.

How do the Germans match up against the Greeks in terms of masturbation? Well, one of their favourite terms is mathematical: fünf gegen einen (five against one).

Actually it also sounds like a German formation or game-plan, doesn’t it. And for that reason (plus the sheer variousness of Germanic shits), my scientific assessment is that Germany’s swearing superiority will lead their to Teutonic triumph tonight.

PS1 One of my correspondents pointed out that knowing a little about a nation’s swearing affords the TV viewer an opportunity to lip-read the players, officials and fans. I find it hard to imagine close attention to tonight’s contest won’t reveal at least one malaka! and a scheisse! or two.

PS2 A friend of mine asked me to let you know something. He writes for The Arts Desk, an online resource. It’s just been voted Best Specialist Journalism Site of 2012. But don’t let that put you off. Ha, ha. It actually is really good. Lots of reviews, mostly slightly longer than you’d get in a daily newspaper. Well-informed, too and light on sneering. The writing’s pretty good also. Anyway, it’s here.

Now that's what I call a review . . .

This was spotted, by Iain Aitch, on the shelves of Waterstone's in Finchley Rd.

Some fun while you're here?

1 Life before Blondie

2 Elvis Costello without glasses

3 And with

Next up Another podcast

I pod, you pod, they podcast

I’m probably well behind the loop on this but I’ve recently become a big fan of the podcast What The Fuck. I load it on to my phone and listen to it while walking the dog etc. If you see me laughing to myself with those black wires hanging from my ears, that’s why.

It’s done by an American comic who I’d never heard of before, Marc Maron. He’s been around for years and is now in his mid-forties. He’s had the divorces, the drug habit, the alcoholism and all that classic comic stuff. He’s angry and twisted and bitter and worried and self-hating and self-doubting. Imagine Woody Allen without pretension and without being a pain in the arse.

The show is just him and another comic, mostly. They talk for an hour or so, sometimes even two hours. I find it fascinating for two reasons.

One, the content and the quality of the conversation. He and the comics — most of whom he knows, if only a little — talk openly and in great detail about their lives. (The language and subject matter is not for the knock-kneed but then you could guess that from the podcast title.) If you ever thought it was a cliche that comedy comes out of pain — painful childhood, in particular — this is proof that cliches are cliches because they’re true.

Two, the relentless detail of the conversation. Not about that emotional stuff. Interesting as that is, it’s not exactly unique. What is special about WTF is its focus on comedy. It delineates and dissects the world of American comedy — stand-up, radio, sitcoms, sketch shows — with fabulous detail. It’s always fascinating to hear the real deal details of a profession. And this is presented by compulsive talkers and explainers and joke-makers. Smart ones, too, all of them. I must have listened to twenty or so shows now. Only another 50 or so to go. Sorry, that’s all, folks, go to go pod.

PS I also had a look at and listen to some of the stand-up performances of Maron and his guests. I was less impressed. Stick with the podcast.

Also Some science for you

Next up Another podcast

Un conte d'un con et de M Lacan, part four

Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde was painted to commission, for Khalil Bey, a Turkish diplomat and gambler with a taste for paintings of unclothed women. He also suffered from some kind of eye ailment and so wore blue spectacles, a fact much commented on by gossip columnists. He was a big figure in Second Empire Paris, big enough, in fact, to rate a passing mention in Stephen Frears' recent film, Chéri, from Colette's novel about an ageing courtesan - which is set nearly half a century after Bey's heyday.

It's possible that Bey and Courbet met at the funeral of Proudhon - the first man to call himself an anarchist and who came up with the phrase 'property is theft'. (Well, of course, what he actually said was: La propriété, c'est le vol!) Courbet was a social radical, set on depicting life beyond 'bourgeois' propriety and reinvigorating French painting. Along with Manet, he was the first shapers of our modern visual world. He painted giant, life-sized paintings of workers and peasants and naked women.

It was his impulsive politics that was finally to undo him, though, rather than his pictures. At the height of the Commune, set up by radical Parisians in the wake of France's collapse in the face of Prussia's 1971 invasion, Courbet was the main advocate of the column in the Place Vendôme which commemorated Napoleon I's achievements. For which, in the counter-revolutionary aftermath of the Commune, Courbet was sentenced to six months and fined 500,000 francs (500, according to Wikipedia). So he fled to Switzerland where he died, of the drink, aged 58.

I’ve no idea how much that was in 2011 euros but, by way of comparison, I’ve seen the price Bey paid Courbet for L’Origine quoted as 25,000 francs It was far from his only purchase. Bey was a major collector — and inspirer — of contemporary artists, many of whom would lay the foundation for Paris’s emergence as the world centre of art for the next half-century at least.

Over three years or so, he bought 124 paintings, including six by Delacroix. He also commissioned Ingres' Bain Turc and Courbet's Le Sommeil (Musée du Petit Palais, Paris) - in which Jo Hiffernan is also supposed to be one of the two sleeping women, the dark-haired one on the left.

According to his - excitable - obituary in the London World, he also pressed tea sets on women he met - 47 in that three-year stretch. A seduction technique, I assume. It must have worked sometimes. His mistress, Jeanne de Tourbey was previously mistress of Prince Napoleon. (I assume the similarity of his and her surnames — Bey/Tourbey — was coincidence, though possibly remarked upon by gossips.) When people talk of the courtesans of late 19th century Paris, it’s her they mostly have in mind.

She is generally described as 'the illegitimate daughter of an illegitimate waitress' - which sounds like the title of a Danny Kaye song and makes me, at least, wonder how you might distinguish between legitimate and non-legitimate waitressing.

Napoleon arranged for her to be given a polish of education by his friend Sainte-Beuve, a leading literary critic, who is also said to have been responsible for introducing Bey to Courbet. Thus polished, she married a comte, becoming comtesse de Loynes. Once free of the comte, she set up a literary salon, the model for Madame Swann's in Proust's big, big book - which I haven't read, of course. Later in life, she became a fervid reactionary, a leading anti-Dreyfussard and a major funder of Action Francaise — in time, a major backer of the Vichy regime. There is a painting of her in the D'Orsay. She looks trouble.

The first recorded reference to Courbet’s painting as L'origine du Monde is late, very late — 1935, in a piece by a Courbet scholar It’s generally said, though, that the title was Bey's idea - as was, perhaps, the small size of the canvas, quite unlike Courbet's usual giant paintings. All the better to conceal it.

PS My Occitanian correspondent Richard pointed out that there was a typo in the heading for the last couple of Courbet postings. I actually meant to write ‘conte’ — story or tale, in French. In fact, I typed ‘comte’ — French for count.

And . . . well, and here is a sentence from my book, Filthy English. ‘It is claimed that English counts were renamed earls because of their titles’ homophonic closeness to the word.’ The word, of course, was cunt.

Next up What a Turk hides in his toilet

Six degrees of osteopathy

A follow-up to my last posting. Well, the first of two follow-ups actually. The next I’ll post tomorrow.

I don’t — as regular readers will surely agree — generally do personal health stuff etc here. I did, though, mention that I had a bad knee last week. Not that you probably care — I certainly wouldn’t if it was you — but I no longer have a bad knee.

For which transformation, I have one person to thank. Which is, frankly, only of interest to me and them. But I thought I’d share with you the (brief) story of how I came to find this person . . .

Garry Trainer, that is. He’s an osteopath, based around the corner from me, in Primrose Hill. A burly, middle-aged, twice-married Kiwi who likes a drink and has just taken up surfing again, he has my deep thanks for fixing my knee.

An hour or so on Monday lunchtime. A few needles — he does acupuncture, too. (I’m inherently sceptical but also acceptingly pragmatical.) A little back bending — no crackings, though. A hefty massage of the back and knee tendons.

Right away, I felt better — improved, that is. By the next day, I was limpless. So, for what it’s worth, this free add.

But I also thought I’d share with you how I came to put my body in Garry’s un-tender care in the first place. And how it connects to my (relative) closeness to Adolf Hitler's hand and Oscar Wilde’s penis.

Garry first, though. About two years ago, in the wake of the exams I sat for the first year of my course, my back got really bad. The worst I ever had. I couldn’t walk. I ended up not seeing the local shops — not much more than a hundred metres away — for nearly a month. I couldn’t get from one floor to the next in under five minutes.

I knew I had to get something done. I’d been to an osteopath years before and she’d done the trick. But she’d moved away.

Two new ones came recommended, both by people I respected. Jonathan Le Bon and Garry Trainer. I checked both their websites. I discovered that Le Bon was brother to Simon Le Bon, the popster, while Garry had had his hands on Gwyneth Paltrow. Well, which one would you have chosen to get closer to?

Me and Adolf Hitler? Well, I’ve shaken hands with not just one but two people who, as children, had their hair ruffled by him.

Oscar Wilde’s penis? I’ve shaken the hand of a man who, in pre-war Brighton, had his hair ruffled* by Bosie, Oscar Wilde’s boyfriend, nemesis and, I should guess, penis-handler.

I can also get to the Pope in one. Freud? Loads via London analysts, of course — particularly via Anna Freud. But also via an American cousin who is related to Joseph Paneth — a close friend of Freud’s who lent him the money for his wedding and who died of TB, at 32. Paneth was also a pal of Nietzche’s.

Hence, my personal variant on the classic parlour game. I call it Six Degrees of Separation Anxiety. It's just the same as Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon — only the link (or end-person) should, in some way, be odd or unsettling. I welcome all contributions to my game. Put your own links to the famous on the comments page.

* Hair-ruffling children was once a big thing in Britain — Germany, too, it seems. I was certainly a victim in my own childhood. Fears of hordes of marauding child-abusers seem to have put paid to hair-ruffling — which seems to have gone the way of spats and . . . Gordon Brown. (I can do him in one, too.)

Today, I am mostly listening to . . . Jackie DeShannon (and Jack Nitzche — no relation.)

Pins and begins

Nonchalant and want

An original demo

You’ve got to live for yourself — and nobody else

Next up The other follow-up — something Maggie Alderson didn’t mention in Cambridge.

What do you call yours?

To Cambridge, and Lucy Cavendish College, for a joint Saturday-night appearance with Maggie Alderson (old work colleague and editor of a collection of female erotica*) at a feminist book festival, Women's Word.

The subject was . . . What do you call yours?

To publicise my book Filthy English, I was appearing in front of a gathering of feminists and inviting them to discuss their favoured words for, well, their favoured anatomical parts, I guess. Presumptuous, at the least.

I suspect I was more anxious than I let myself feel.

The reason Maggie was with me was she was of great help with my book on that evening's subject**. Here is the relevant section from the book . . .

In early 2009, a group of women novelists got together and published a collection of 'unashamedly sexy stories' entitled In Bed With. Not so unashamed, though, that they'd use their real names. (Pseudonymy: sounds like a perversion, doesn't it.) Knowing one of the editors, Maggie Alderson, I got her to send me an electronic copy of the book. I did a count of the words they used, for their own parts and their partners'.

In this 334-page dirty book, there are: seven cunts, four pussies, three vaginas, three labias, three bushes, one vulva, one fanny but no twats or front bottoms; five tits (all in the same story), four titties (all in one other story), twenty-two nipples and fifty-seven breasts (four stories have seven apiece); fifteen clitorises (four in one story) and two clits (both on the same page). Men? There are forty-three cocks (seventy-four per cent of them in just four of the twenty stories), nineteen penises (ten in one story), one dick and no pricks; nine balls but no bollocks or testicles. Sexual activity? No cunnilingus or fellatio and the only bugger is a non-sexual expletive. Fucks and fucking? There are forty-five sexual ones (thirteen in one story, a tale of revenge) and eleven non-sexual ones. There is one roger, one bonk and five shags, all of them humorous or dismissive. And there are ninety-one kisses.

A fair picture, I'd say, of which words are used for what by literate, educated, middle-class twenty-first-century Englishwomen - when their noms de porn lull them into thinking no one's counting.

Maggie and I recreated our original phone calls - complete with props. We discussed female anatomy. (I'm avoiding the actual words we used so this blog doesn't get censored or blocked.) We discussed attitudes to female anatomy and the language used - in English and Serbian, in particular. (Maggie's husband is Serbian.) I claimed that if there were a World Cup for swearing, the final would always be England-Serbia.

I talked about the fine grain peculiarities of the word wanker and Maggie bemoaned the paucity of words or phrases for female masturbation - something I write about in my book. We branched out into a discussion of the implications of the playground insult 'your mum'.

We were the last act of the whole week and, while the crowd weren't exactly the second house at the Glasgow Empire, they were a gobby lot. Smart, opinionated, voluble, aggressive at times even. A real treat for a writer at a reading.

Finally, Maggie offered a prize of a copy of her book for the best word or phrase for female masturbation. I said the competition was open to - boom, boom - all-comers. I got a laugh, thank god.

The winning entry was 'flicking the bean', provided by a 19-year old former Catholic convent schoolgirl, sitting between her psychiatrist father (who went to school with Shane MacGowan and thus, like me, knew him before he was Irish) and her stepmother - an academic and former member of the Fall.

At the after-show drinks, she - the former member of the Fall, that is - noticed that I was limping a little, in pain from a crooked knee. 'I deal with pain,' she said. Having asked me a couple of questions, she told me to clench my buttocks. 'Really hard.' I did as I was told. 'No, really hard. Till it hurts.'

Stupidly - or possibly because she was American (and a former member of the Fall) - I assumed she was some kind of alternative practitioner. Not that that stopped me following her advice. But still . . . Saturday night, being told to clench your buttocks by a former member of The Fall. Such are the wonders of life.

Then I looked her up on-line. I wanted to see just how big the pool of The Fallen is. I discovered two things. She is one of 59 ex-Fallers (by one count, anyway). And she is Head of the Pain Team at West Suffolk Hospital.


Some entertainment? Washboard art?

Next up The final bit bit of my answers to my old friend's arguments against Freud and . . . who would Freud have supported in the World Cup?

* Actually she hates the word erotica, preferring to call them 'unashamedly sexy stories'. I used it, of course, to tease her.

** First, I wrote 'subject at hand'. Then I started to make the obvious smutty joke - 'as it were' or somesuch. Then I realised I simply couldn't do that. 'Subject at hand' is just such a cliche.