Film stars lost for words: But why does Mrs Doubtfire have to swear? asks David Lister

NOW this I wish I'd heard. I refer to the conversation that apparently took place between the British Board of Film Classification and Twentieth Century Fox, the makers of Mrs Doubtfire, the box office hit based on a children's novel.

The censors refused the film a U or PG certificate and gave it a 12 instead, which means that it cannot be seen in the cinema by children under 12 even if their parents want them to. The problem, the censors explained to Fox, concerned three lines spoken by Robin Williams, the star. Williams plays a father who dresses as a nanny in order to see his estranged children. He tells his ex-wife's boyfriend, in graphic detail, about her sexual proclivities, which include an aggressive appetite for oral sex. 'She's got a power tool in the bedroom . . . I'm surprised it hasn't broken her teeth.'

Fox refused to remove the three lines, even though its advertising campaign invites cinema-goers to 'bring the family'. In a reversal of the usual form, parents besieged the censors' offices with calls complaining that their children weren't allowed to hear sexual innuendo. The censors took the unusual step of issuing an explanatory press release. 'The board,' said the director, James Ferman, 'asked for some of this speech to be removed, in particular references to her use of sex aids, to her fondness for oral sex and to the possibility that she had a sexually transmitted disease.' Mr Ferman acknowledged that the language was not explicit and some of the jokes might not be understood by children. But, he added, the censors had 'learnt from experience that many parents would find such lines unsuitable in a PG film'.

Silly old censors, then, making fools of themselves as censors always do. Except that, after seeing the film last week, I think the censors happen to be right and Fox wrong. I accept that the scene in question was quite funny, with the words delivered at a breakneck speed which would have passed over a lot of children's heads anyway. But were they really necessary? There is no such dialogue in Anne Fine's book. And it surely can't have been beyond the wit of Hollywood screenplay writers to have found Robin Williams three alternative and equally amusing lines that would have satisfied the censors.

Then again perhaps it was beyond their wit. The assault last year by Michael Medved on Hollywood values has led to a rethink on showing graphic sex and violence in popular films. But there is one pervasive trend it remains unfashionable to question: needless bad language. And not least in children's films.

In Mrs Doubtire Robin Williams is fond of calling people he doesn't care for 'bastard'. Again, the word doesn't appear in the book. But this is tame stuff compared with other Hollywood movies made for kids. I have watched with my children one of the most popular videos for the sub-teens called Adventures in Babysitting. This enjoyable fantasy has a teenage girl babysitter taking kids on a trip through New York. But at one point a potential mugger confronts them threatening repeatedly, 'Don't fuck with me'. Why? 'Don't mess with me' would have been just as effective and just as threatening.

Apart from Merchant Ivory Edwardiana, British films are if anything worse. This month I was at the London Evening Standard annual British Film Awards where clips were shown from prize-winning films. Nearly all of them included a stream of four-letter words. British directors - who cling to gritty realism and wonder why they get such low audiences - patronisingly assume that no working-class conversation takes place without swearing.

I am not squeamish. But I think bad language should be used in films sparingly, so that when it is used it shocks or gives an emotional release. If it is a staple of nearly every screenplay then we lose a whole underground vocabulary. What can a writer fall back on to express anger or pain or despair?

Real venom is actually better expressed without swearing. When Rosamund said coldly to her husband, Dr Lydgate, in last week's episode of Middlemarch, 'My, what a mess you've made of things,' his devastation was as clear as the breakdown of the marriage and much more poignantly so than if she had spat out 'asshole'.

Why does the film industry find it so necessary to include swearing and innuendo in the most unlikely vehicles? When I asked the head of Twentieth Century Fox in Britain last week, he gave a straight answer. American scriptwriters deliberately inserted at least one F-word or sexually explicit reference as this would automatically get the film a 13 certificate in the United States and 'give it some bite for the hard-bitten youth of America'. Distributors sometimes write this imperative into producers' contracts. This led to the inclusion of a 'f. . . me' from Will Scarlett in the American version of Robin Hood, Prince Of Thieves.

But I think the film industry is wrong. Look at the success of old-fashioned romances such as Strictly Ballroom, at the huge Disney revival, at those Merchant Ivory films. Children as much as adults use the cinema for escapism and not as a mirror of the seedier side of street life.

Much more important, cinema and television are the two most influential media in the world: they should try to lead, to set standards rather than reflect the dated assumptions of Hollywood screenplay writers. The big studios should think about it from a marketing point of view, if from no other. Parents are uncomfortable watching scenes that include bad language and sexual innuendo with their children. Cut it out and you'll get a bigger family audience. Robin Williams doesn't need to use vibrator jokes to be funny.