Last updated 11:40, Thursday, 15 May 2008

There was a bloke round our way they used to call “the vicar” because of his profuse use of the F-word and other expletives that contributed to my childhood education.

Bad mouths: Jonathan Ross and Gordon Ramsay

One can only wonder if Gordon Ramsay ever visited the Lake District on holiday and came across this local character and decided to adopt his style.

I have always considered swearing to be a sign of inadequacy in the use of the English language.

I suppose were are back in the F-word zone now that Ramsay is restored to the box with a new series of celebrity cook ups on Channel 4.

But it’s not only Ramsay, the chef notorious for his use of foul language, who blights our screens with his ugly tirades.

Madonna slipped a couple of F-words into a recent interview and Jonathan Ross’s Friday night show is peppered with bad language and innuendo that really isn’t funny.

Okay, so it’s after the watershed. But that doesn’t excuse this slovenly, irritating and ghastly misuse of language for what can only be childish effect.

It can’t be long before, having exhausted the F-word, they push the boundaries of bad taste back still further by introducing even more offensive stuff.

Who among us can say we haven’t, at some time of great stress, let the odd naughty word slip? But the sort of language you might hear in the football club changing rooms or rugby showers isn’t right for popular television programmes.

Quality interviewers and presenters don’t need to use it, so why do the likes of Ramsay and Ross trade on it? You never heard Parky use the F-word did you, even when attacked by Emu.

Anyone who heard the recent interview Ross did with Michael Aspel on his Friday show must have felt like curling up and dying in front of the box.

If you didn’t hear it I will spare you the details. Save to say it related to a relationship Aspel may or may not have had with a foreign beauty queen and what he did to said beauty queen in explicit terms.

It’s not good enough for people to say you can switch off if you don’t like it. I don’t want my TV entertainment littered with four letter words and I’m sure many others feel the same without being prudish.

Much is said about the lowering of standards. If evidence was ever required then Messrs Ross and Ramsay and others of their ilk provide it.