[Gayle]

It's all about context with a bit of fashion thrown in.

Literature has always been full of fashionable swear words - Shakespeare used words that were risque at the time and probably fell foul of the moral police more than once because of it.

The real problem is that fashion pushes boundaries and by pushing the boundaries in one way we let a whole host of other things in. For instance, the first time f**k was used on TV was on The Tube and there was outrage, it made all the national papers at the time. Now, you can hear it everynight after 9pm whatever channel you're watching. That was a boundary that was pushed back and is now 'acceptable' which means that people are busily working on pushing the next boundary and the next. We could never go back to a point where f**k was as offensive as it used to be.

Having said all that, I think that children should be as protected as possible from all swear words. I'm particularly careful about what I say in front of the kids. I do, very rarely, swear myself but never in front of the children (or my parents for that matter!).

Which brings me back round to the argument that it all depends what the context is and for me, the context means it is only really truly offensive when said around children. So, whilst I would find Educating Rita acceptable to read or watch I wouldn't be happy allowing my children to watch it until they were considerably older.