tenbears | Appearing on the telly

Some time ago, I was invited to appear on George Negus' new show on the ABC. Keen to share my wisdom with the world, naturally, I agreed.

Right from the start, Negus was professional, if a little blunt.

"Let's get a few thing straight", he said before we went to air. "Under no circumstances are you to get drunk and tell the story of the time you went to prison. This is a family show and the word insertion appears far too often for anyone's liking. Likewise, none of your stories that include the expression the apex of the fan of vomit are going to make it past the gatekeepers either. Are we clear on that?"

"I guess so," I replied, beginning to wonder why I'd been invited on the show at all. "Is that all?"

"Not quite. I have a note from

splodgenoodles advising me not to let you get started on the subject of pandas. That suits me just fine. I fucking hate pandas"

"Really? I could tell you a thing or two that might change your..."

"Shut up! And my research team tells me you've got a bit of a mouth on you sometimes, so here's a list of words you can't say on the telly."

I read the list. It was longer than you might expect.

"So I can't say any of these words?"

"No."

"What about when I hit my thumb with a hammer?"

"Not even then," said Negus. "How likely is that to happen on freaking chat show anyway, for fuck's sake?"

"So if a word's not on this list can I say it?"

"What did you have in mind?"

"Well I was wondering about words that sound a bit like a swear word but aren't really."

"Do you mean like the old BBC classic "Around the Horn" having a character with the unlikely surname of Gruntfuttock? That should be okay, yeah"

"What about words or phrases that that are phonetically similar to words on the list, but are spelled differently and have a totally different meaning or no meaning at all?"

George Negus furrowed his brow and his eyes narrowed. "What do you mean exactly?"

Cheerfully I replied, "Well, take the word foccaccia for example. It refers to a kind of bread. The first syllable is normally pronounced with a schwa, an un-aspirated vowel sound which sounds identical to one of the words on your list here, but the full word has a totally different (and non sweary) meaning. I could compound it further by adding the word socks to create the nonsense expression foccaccia socks. Do you follow me? If I hit my thumb with a hammer on your show, can I say "foccaccia socks" or something similar?"

Negus clearly wasn't sure, but he said "I guess so. Just so long as the expression has no instantly recognizable meaning, we should be fine."

And so it came to pass, gentle reader, that I appeared on the George Negus Show, on the venerable old ABC.

And when I hit myself on the thumb with a hammer I said "Cunting Bears!"

I'm still waiting for Negus to contact me about a second interview.