Sex and the City: stretching the boundaries
Long gone are the days when dirty jokes on TV and radio had to be swathed in euphemism and innuendo, Round the Horne-style. These days we are freer with our filth. Perhaps the edgiest and funniest show on telly is My Name is Earl. It is gleefully twisted and routinely - but carefully - rude, including jokes about such subjects as recreational sex with your friend's mother, vaginoplasty and the alleged proclivities of scoutmasters.
Personally, I enjoy a good litany of profanity. I applaud the rapid-fire fucks of The Thick of It and appreciate Avid Merrion's sex wee, thankful that today we tolerate the judicious application of strategic Chaucerian adjectives and sophisticated adult references. (Incidentally, the first person I remember saying "cunt" for comedy purposes was - believe it or not - Brooke Shields on The Larry Sanders Show.) However, context dictates acceptability. Explicit gags about coprophilia will never appear on My Family or The Chuckle Brothers, although I pray for the following: "Barry! Mind that ladder you clumsy cunt!"
When wondering what, if permitted to joke about heterosexual anal sex, Noel Coward might have said, try this exchange in Friends. Monica suspects the potential surrogate mother of their yearned-for child is already pregnant. She claims not to have had sex, but to have done "something else".
"Do you mean," asks Chandler, delicately, "...the thing we never do, or the thing we hardly ever do."
"The thing we never do," replies Monica wryly.
In my sheltered life, the rudest gag I've ever heard appeared on the frank and often uproariously ribald Sex and the City. Alongside routines about "funky spunk" and "going backdoor", was a complex scatological insult involving transsexual prostitution, rectums and excrement so outrageous that all I could do was shout "Bravo!"
On hearing the abuse, prim Charlotte wonders if it's the rudest thing ever. Aghast, Carrie replies: "...well, I sure hope so". Has mainstream TV ever broadcast a dirtier joke?
