Swearing and shouting are underrated, says Giles Coren. Four-letter words can be immensely satisfying and extraordinarily effective
When I was ever so small and sweet, romper-suited and frilly-booted and really quite an angel to look at, I must have had a gob on me like an angry plasterer, because the only piece of advice I can remember my mother ever giving me is: ‘If you’ve got nothing nice to say, Giles, then keep your mouth shut.’
This was most often said at table, I think, when I was passing comment on the ickiness of the boil-in-the-bag cod mornay or the pooey colour of the butterscotch Angel Delight, perhaps on the state of my baby sister’s table manners, or my father’s, or the smell of the Portuguese au pair…
But it was advice I never took. And it’s just as well. For as it has turned out, I am the restaurant critic of the world’s greatest newspaper, a television broadcaster known mostly for being rude back to Gordon Ramsay, and the sender of an angry email to a sub-editor which went viral and put my writing (albeit a scarily primal, late-night, id-driven version of it) in front of an audience most writers can only dream of. If I had listened to my mum, I would be driving a minicab. Or collecting whelks for Mr Wong, and glad of my £1 an hour.
Rudeness has been good to me over the years. And while I, like most people on the threshold of middle age, deplore our society’s ongoing descent into vulgarity, and believe that politeness is, and must remain, the grease that keeps the wheels of the nation turning, I am here to tell you that being very, very rude to the right people, at the right time, can be extraordinarily satisfying, not to mention spiritually elevating, professionally effective and lucrative beyond imagining.
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