Does Daddy Pig Say The F-Word? You Can Decide For Yourself.

Swearing in Peppa Pig?? Well that sent me scurrying rat-like to the files I can tell you.

Are you ready to rock? Madame Gazelle certainly was.

Recently as you know our favourite cartoon pig, Peppa, became involved in debate at the highest political levels in the land.

The director of the ABC countered the Abbott government's cuts to the ABC by saying, "Well if that's the way you want it, we'll have to cut Peppa Pig from our purchase list".

It was a masterstroke of political thought by Scott, as it (quite accurately) painted the Abbott government as the buzzkills that they are.

Make no mistake, if Peppa does go, it's the Abbott government who have done it, not the ABC.

However, in my researches for this story, I came across this frankly astonishing headline, "Peppa Pig taught my little girl the F-word".

I stared at this saucer-eyed with surprise, Peppa teaches us a lot of things, but swearing? Surely not!

So I went across to the site and found the Youtube clip of the "offending" passage, you can listen to it yourself and make up your own mind, I've put the link at the end of the story.

The passage of dialogue involves Madame Gazelle's shady past, in which she was in a band.

And it sounds as if life on the road with the "Rocking Gazelles", must have been pretty willing.

Anyway, after her days getting drunk in the backstage areas of seedy pubs in Soho, Madame Gazelle takes the job teaching Peppa and the children, and we're all much happier for it.

I might add, also in my searching for the picture above of Madame Gazelle playing the guitar, I noticed another arrow in Miss Rabbit's quiver.

For those who haven't read my other story, (And if not, why not?!), Miss Rabbit is the cornerstone of the local workforce, she runs the china store, the shoe shop, serves tea and biscuits in the forest, as well as flying the local helicopter, and, as I noticed on this pass, drives the school bus an' all.

Where does she get the energy? Guarana? I wish I knew.

Anyway, I don't think the offending word in the clip is the F-word, I think the person in the story got her wires crossed.

She said her two-year-old learned the F-word from Peppa, I don't think so.

It's far more likely that she picked it up at playgroup.

However this did remind me of a few things that got past the censor on Children's TV.

Probably the first was something my mother pointed out, she, (for some reason known only to herself) didn't like my favourite show, Doctor Who.

And she was always poking fun at it, another in the eternal line of how-not-to-be-a-parent tips that you can thank my olds for.

Anyway, one evening the Doctor and his current assistant, the lovely Sarah Jane Smith were wandering about the infinitely capacious interior of the Tardis, my mother said, "Do you think the Doctor spends his spare time carrying on with his assistant?"

Carrying on meaning some sort of sexual peccadillo.

I said "no", but afterward I had to admit, that if anyone was going to get a bit of action, it was certainly the good doctor.

Apart from anything else, with the gift of time travel, if they did have a particularly satisfying shag, he could then start up the Tardis's time engine and go back and relive the experience.

Wouldn't that be nice?

However, Doctor Who was a children's show, and nothing of the like ever occurred while I was watching.

I might add, my mother saw herself as a feminist, and as such, I still don't understand why she was always bagging the show, for Doctor Who actually did a lot for women's rights in the workplace.

To start with the Doctor's assistant, invariably female, when confronted by a monster, would freeze in fear, and simply scream for The Doctor to come and save her.

Jo was most notable for this.

But then Sarah Jane Smith came along and she was a journalist, and as such was happy to go investigating by herself and ring a measure of independence to the role.

But even she was put in the shade by her replacement, Leela.

Leela lived on a remote planet as part of a tribe of savages, named the Sevateem, who were involved in constant war with the Tesh.

She was even more capable than Miss Rabbit when it came to getting things done.

If confronted by a many-tentacled nasty oozing from a rock face and threatening her with engulfment via its mutli-toothed mouth Leela wouldn't scream for the doctor, but would more likely unship her trusty knife and have the thing revolving over a slow fire, in preparation to eat, before the Doctor returned.

So Doctor Who was wholesome, if couch-hiding-behind entertainment, but where the censors really got blind-sided was with Captain Pugwash.

Captain Pugwash was a pretty lame BBC show about pirates, using cardboard cutouts, manipulated with bits of string, to represent various members of the crew.

They would sail about the Spanish main and have adventures of one sort and another.

I sort of watched it when there was nothing else on, and in my home town in the seventies, that was pretty much all of the time, but then one day Captain Pugwash disappeared from our screens.

I noticed that, but it wasn't till some years later that I found out why.

Turns out the names of the some of the characters were considerably more adult than the show's 'G' rating warranted.

A 'pugwash' for instance, is a most unsavoury naval activity that would render the receiver unable to sit down for a week.

The first mate was Master Bates (masturbates), one of the sailors was Seamen Staines (semen stains), and finally there was Roger the Cabin Boy.

For those without passing knowledge of English slang, roger means to root, as we would have said in the seventies.

The Americans would say 'screw'.

So Roger the Cabin Boy was more likely to be used in its verb form, rather than the noun.

So compared to that, the possible use of the F-word in Peppa Pig is decidedly low level stuff, and anyway, I don't think they do use it, but you can make up your own mind.

Anyway, I've got to go and see about a ditch that needs to be dug on a garden job I am overseeing, I wonder if Miss Rabbit can drive a forty-tonne excavator?

Almost certainly judging from her form so far, and if so, I'm going to hire her!

Listen here.