Are We Live? (14 page)
Authors: Marion Appleby
Straight off the pitch with adrenaline pumping round their bodies, you could forgive sportsmen for committing the odd swearing-related gaffe – especially if they’re faced with nosy journalists armed with a barrage of questions.
The bleepers weren’t quick enough to mask the naughty language uttered by the following sportsmen.
‘I’ll have fucking sex tonight.’
An overexcited Peter Casey after a triumphant win at the horse races
Interviewer: ‘You’ve achieved other things in your career. How does this compare?’
Wayne Rooney: ‘Ah, it’s the fucking best by far …[looks sheepishly at interviewer] sorry, ha, ha!’
Wayne Rooney, being interviewed live on Sky Sports News
‘Fucking wanker.’
Paul ‘Gazza’ Gascoigne, when the organizers of the Italia ’90 tournament asked each player to mouth their name to camera for the benefit of European TV stations
‘My season was shit …Can I say that?’
Football bad boy Mario Balotelli swears on live TV after winning the FA Cup Final
Theatre critic Kenneth Tynan was the first man to say ‘fuck’ on British television.
During a live BBC TV debate in 1965, Tynan was asked if he would ever consider staging a play that contained depictions of sexual intercourse. Tynan replied, ‘I doubt if there are any rational people to whom the word fuck would be particularly diabolical, revolting or totally forbidden. I think that anything which can be printed or said can also be seen.’
Lesson to all would-be journalists: Do not question legend Sir Alex Ferguson’s leadership of Manchester United!
Geoff Shreeves:
Had you ever known more pressure on you in your nineteen-year tenure?
Alex Ferguson:
Nah, that’s absolute bollocks, that.
Sky Sports News
When Italian footballer Roberto Di Matteo uttered the word ‘shit’ live on Sky Sports, the kindly presenter immediately excused him because English is Di Matteo’s second language: ‘We’re nearly past the watershed, but I know what you said. That’s a word [former football manager] Dennis Wise taught him all those years ago – Dennis, it’s your fault.’
While he was being interviewed for television at a football training session during his tenure as manager of Portsmouth Football Club, Harry Redknapp was hit by a football. He wasn’t very happy about it.
Redknapp:
We lost Festa with a ligament injury, he’s having a scan today. I’m just hoping it’s not as serious as we think it might be. So he’s certainly not going to be around. Arjan de Zeeuw’s done a groin—
[Harry is hit by a football. He looks around, furious, for the culprit.]
Redknapp
[to a player off camera]
:
WHY THE FUCK HAVE YOU KICKED THAT OVER HERE?
[The culprit can be heard trying to explain himself.]
Redknapp:
WHAT? …YOU TRIED TO KICK IT IN THE GOAL AND YOU HIT ME? GOT SOME FUCKING BRAINS, HAVEN’T YOU? [Distracted and clearly still livid] No wonder he’s in the fucking reserves.
It’s a real divider, and no more so than when it’s uttered on live television.
These professionals have been known to let the odd one slip …
‘[After a video montage of Cantona] How cool is that! Great to see Eric C**t …Cantona.’
BBC
Sportsday
host Olly Foster
‘Cuts here, cuts there, cuts everywhere …Supposing, though, some of the people who
ought
to be paying taxes so the c**ts …cuts aren’t so bad, aren’t actually doing so.’
Jeremy Paxman on BBC Two’s
Newsnight
, January 2011
‘The roads and bridges are closed and trains in and out of the c**t …county have been cancelled.’
A Sky News presenter reporting on flooding in Cornwall
‘We’ve got a weather c**t, er, front coming down from Scotland.’
BBC weather presenter John Hammond
The myths of live broadcast debunked
Although David Letterman’s sidekick, band-leader Paul Shaffer, was thought to have been the first person to say ‘fuck’ on American television, it was in fact Grace Slick of rock group Jefferson Airplane.
The incident happened during the band’s performance of ‘We Can Be Together’ on
The Dick Cavett Show
on 19 August 1969, the day after the legendary Woodstock concert. Slick refused to change the lyric ‘Up against the wall, motherfucker’. In fact, she muttered the f-bomb twice during the performance.