The shocking truth about all this swearing on stage

Comics swear to look macho in front of an audience that tends to heckle and humiliate

So who made the most radical contribution to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe? I nominate as young Turk of the festival an old stager, Barry Cryer. His contribution was to speak out against comedians swearing. While Cryer, who was performing on the fringe, is older than most of his fellow comics, quite a bit older, he is no fuddy duddy. Indeed, Mark Thomas and many of the other big names in comedy have long held him up as one of their most admired colleagues. I got to know him when I was writing the biography of Kenny Everett. Cryer was the writer for Everett's TV shows and helped create characters such as Sid Snot, Gizzard Puke and – the nearest he came to swearing himself – Cupid Stunt. Gizzard Puke, you may or may not remember, excused his anti-social behaviour by pleading in mitigation that he came from a broken home, adding bashfully: "It was me who broke it."

At Edinburgh, Cryer went out on a limb to say that the endless repetition of the f-word by stand-ups was "boring".

"Words get tedious if you flog them at the audience, though one word planted immaculately can be very funny because you don't expect it. If you're telling a joke about an 'F-ing pub and an F-ing this', why are you doing that? It's counterproductive. Just tell the joke," Cryer says

Such advice would, if followed, have brought the Edinburgh fringe to a standstill, so it was ignored. But it was good advice, not because Edinburgh audiences can't take a few four-letter words, but because using swear words in almost every sentence devalues their power and shock value. Harold Pinter has said that if fellow writers use these words indiscriminately they forfeit an underground vocabulary. And it is that underground vocabulary which can still chill as an outburst on stage or amuse as a punch line, but only if it is not peppered through the script for no apparent reason.

Cryer's theory is that Edinburgh fringe comics swear to look macho in front of an audience that tends to heckle and humiliate the performers. It's rather sweet to think that the expletives are merely insecurity. But there are more effective ways of dealing with a heckler. Graham Norton shut up a persistent heckler recently by remarking: "Isn't it good to see that care in the community is working?"

Comedy is not alone in using swearing to doubtful effect. Cinema is the biggest offender, but there, I am quite sure, money is the motivator. There is a legion of examples of the American studios making sure that swear words are inserted into scripts for family films. Remember how Robin Williams in the nineties film version of Mrs Doubtfire made jokes about oral sex, jokes that were certainly not in Anne Fine's children's novel. The reason for such insertions, as movie chiefs will privately admit, is that one F-word or sexually explicit reference will automatically get a film a 13 certificate in the United States. This gives it street cred, or as one London chief of a big American studio told me, "gives it bite for the hard-bitten youth of America".

It's that wearisome logic that leads to no end of inappropriate exclamations to 'up' the age rating. My favourite example is Will Scarlett saying "fuck me!" in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. Even the Edinburgh fringe couldn't better that. Perhaps there should be a new award alongside the Perrier in Edinburgh next year – for the comic who actually shocks by swearing.

A BROCHURE arrives for the new season at English National Opera. "Treachery!" it shouts. "Revenge-Sacrifice!" it screams. Is this at last a desire to come clean about the enforced resignation of Nicholas Payne as general director? Sadly, no. It is just the marketing department's attempt to sell tickets for productions of Tosca and Rigoletto. But, it is unlikely that any dramas on stage will compete with the drama that continues to reverberate off stage. The all powerful chairman Martin Smith, with whom Payne is said to have clashed, has kept his silence; but word reaches me that some members of the board, which voted unanimously for Payne's exit, were unhappy about the decision, and the way the meeting was conducted. I'm told that Smith said to the doubters that if the meeting was not unanimous, there would have to be resignations. Whether he meant his or theirs is unclear.

MARGARET THATCHER must have been intrigued on Tuesday when BBC One announced its new slate of dramas. One of them is a light-hearted account of the Jeffrey Archer story. Lady Thatcher may well not be amused by the BBC making light of the tribulations of her imprisoned friend. But the casting must have secretly pleased her. The former PM is being played by the ice cool, sexy movie star Greta Scacchi. Who says Greg Dyke doesn't ever suck up to the Tories?

d.lister@independent.co.uk