When did the advertising industry get so obsessed with swearing and innuendo?

When did the advertising industry decide that swearing sells? Look around you, and you’ll start to see rude, unfunny double entendres everywhere. The latest company to jump on the bandwagon is Toyota — currently flogging cars with the catchphrase, ‘Go Fun Yourself’. Try not to split your sides laughing.

I blame French Connection. In 1991, the once respectable clothes shop started referring to itself as fcuk. The company began knocking out T-shirts, saying nasty things like ‘Too busy to fcuk’ and ‘fcuk fashion’. The campaign was such a hit that, God help us, Conservative Future — formerly the Young Conservatives — called itself ‘cfuk’ for a while, until French Connection threatened legal action.

I’m all for double entendre. When handled brilliantly — fnaar! fnaar! — by Frankie Howerd or Viz’s ‘Finbarr Saunders and his Double Entendres’, it can be startlingly funny and original. Oh, for a swearing adman to match up to the double entendres of Kenneth Williams in Carry On Doctor:

Dr [Kenneth Williams]: ‘You may not realise it, but I was once a weak man.’