Slips of the tongue and strong language

I found myself using strong language on the radio show today. Except it wasn't quite on the scale of James Naughtie and Andrew Marr on Radio 4 earlier today. Naughtie's slip of the tongue on the Today programme this morning, in which he gave the Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt a new surname, was 11 seconds of car crash radio that has been the talk of the web today. An hour later Andrew Marr on Start the Week found himself in a discussion about freudian slips repeating verbatim what Naughtie had said! It even made the Channel 4 news tonight. I hope Jon Snow didn't slip too!

In my case, I was quoting a line from a novel. "Trash" by Andy Mulligan. The line reads "you look like a piece of shit", the words of one character to another, in this case words uttered by a policeman to a young boy. And this word, and a second use of it, this time in the past tense, saw the book removed from a shortlist of books for the BBC Blue Peter Book Award. Blue Peter issued us a statement saying that they didn't want to expose their audience, from ages 6-12, to this language. Mulligan argued passionately that his book shouldn't be judged on this alone and that, in his opinion, books like Harry Potter exposed children to much darker material. Listen here to Arts Extra, his interview with me earlier is the second item.

You do wonder though what your children hear, what language they are exposed to and how you protect them. For the moment the strongest word my two say to each other is "stupid". And even though I hate hearing them say it, I know the stronger four letter words are only round the corner. Is it better to talk about the words now, explain them, demystify them, take the taboo out of them?

I remember sometime in the late 70's early 80's Blue Peter getting criticism for showing one of their presenters, Lesley Judd, getting a scan on the show when she was pregnant.

Maybe if our writers don't take risks with what our children are going to learn anyway, slips of the tongue will achieve what happened today on Today- either extreme criticism or sniggers behind the bike sheds.