Dirty language????

Pringle thinks the diminishing power of the F-word to shock is further proof of the decline of civil society.

Yet there are worse ways of speaking. A 1997 British poll of swear words ranked it third to the C-word and the motherf---er word in shock value. Racial pejoratives carry far more powerful stings.

Despite the growth in acceptance of the F-word, it still carries a nasty taste in many mouths.

The Herald's policy on its use illustrates the ambivalence it inspires: the newspaper's style guide states that writers are not to use swear words in copy and can use them in quotes only under limited circumstances.

The two most controversial four-letter words take dashes after the first letter. The Good Weekend magazine and Spectrum can use the words in full but sparingly with the editor's knowledge.

The battle over the F-word in Australia was fought in literature long before Graham Kennedy's crow calls carried into loungerooms. Governments proscribed D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover and James Joyce's Ulysses.

Ulysses was banned in 1919, allowed in 1937 and banned again in 1941. The F-word was one of many difficulties with the text and one that remained a problem for the 1967 movie of Joyce's book, generally agreed to be the first mainstream film to use it. Australian censors banned it. New Zealand authorities allowed it, but only to sex-segregated audiences.

In February 1964, Oz magazine sent up the earnest American folk singer Joan Baez with the words "Get Folked". It was deemed so offensive that the editors Richard Walsh, Richard Neville and Martin Sharp were charged under obscenity laws.

Walsh recalls how "get folked" was endlessly and bizarrely debated in court proceedings. He went on to become the founding editor of Nation Review, a 1970s weekly magazine that pioneered the mainstream use of the F-word but Walsh cannot remember when he first allowed it in his pages: "But certainly if a politician said it in a public place, we were happy to report that."

In 1968, Jean-Claude van Itallie's play America Hurrah! was banned because one of the actors, wearing a giant papier mache head, was required to write the magic word on a blackboard. Yet the following year, Reg Livermore was singing the word to the rafters in Hair without police interference. Police remained inactive in 1970 when a character in the gay play The Boys in the Band uttered the line: "Who do I have to f--- around here for a drink?"

The impresario Harry M. Miller produced both and says he had backing from the Catholic Education Office in Melbourne for the play because it reflected homosexual experience, while the musical disturbed Catholics in Rose Bay such that Kincoppal offered prayers to save his soul.

In September 1962, the American comedian Lenny Bruce was banned from performing at the Aarons Hotel in Pitt Street after giving an account of the crucifixion littered with euphemisms. "When finally, he blurted out the Lady Chatterley word, there was a stunned silence," reported one Sydney newspaper, in a piece both dribbling and coy. Later that decade Kennedy's "faaaaaark" broke across the land. But nobody complained until 1975, when the Broadcasting Control Board banned him going live. Now the F-word lies undisturbed on late-night TV in the Sopranos, SBS movie sub-titles and Rage. The internet has more than 25 million listings for it but the Australian organisation responsible for registering domain names on the internet refused "f---.com.au".

And police try to turn back the clock, while O'Shane is part of a widespread movement in the courts throwing out offensive language cases for years. Here's magistrate David Heilpern's Dubbo court judgement dismissing a charge against a juvenile: "The word f--- is extremely commonplace now and has lost much of its punch. One cannot walk down the streets of any of the towns in which I sit, day or night, without hearing the word or its derivatives used as a noun, verb, adjective and, indeed, a term of affection.

"I have stood on Sydney suburban railway stations while private school uniformed kids (girls and boys) yell 'F--- off!' to each other across platforms without anyone looking up from their newspaper in surprise … I too have had the experience of having witnesses being cross-examined and responding to propositions by saying 'F--- off - it didn't happen like that'. I have had witnesses who, when asked their name, answer John f---ing Smith."

I take it back. ********** and **** ARE allowed.