(Note: this is a couple of weeks old but we forgot to post it.)
There’s a row in Alsager over the appearance of the one word in the English language that still causes offence — the one that radio presenters have got into trouble for accidentally saying in stories about the North Kent Hunt and former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt.
You know the one — the c-word, as it’s often called — but to avoid offence and save faffing about, I’m going to call it Cora. (Apologies to all Coras; none of you are Coras.)
The row stems from a stall selling T-shirts and other items emblazoned with rude words at Alsager Pride, which markets itself as family-friendly.
American feminists of the 1970s tried to reclaim words like bitch and Cora, in the same way that gay people have reclaimed queer and Black people have taken back the word I shall call Nigel.
“Serving Cora,” Wikipedia informs us, means being a strong feminist. Not a phrase I’m going to risk lavishing on people close to me, or in Chronicle headlines. Similar to the more family-friendly slay, it means exuding fierce, feminine energy.
It is clearly an offensive word, and should not have appeared at a festival that markets itself as family-friendly. There’d probably be a row about T-shirts featuring the word Nigel — itself best left to rappers on albums bearing parental warnings — and there certainly is a row over the use of Cora. Only a Richard Head would pretend it wasn’t offensive in the context of a small-town, family-friendly event.
It’s a popular word on T-shirts: on a recent visit to trendy Affleck’s in Manchester, the cheaper stalls — magnets for 14-year-olds — were packed with such shirts, likely sold more for shock value to daft teens than to woke academics making a feminist argument. Anyone who goes to music festivals will see similar T-shirts. (Back in the day, Hugh Cornwell of The Stranglers famously wore a shirt where the Ford logo was altered to spell another four-letter word. None of this is new.)
Interestingly, Cora has a long history and wasn’t always obscene.
Geoffrey Chaucer famously used it, disguised enough in Olde Englishe to be quoted: “You shall have queynte right enough at eve.”
Shakespeare referenced it — and he’s a genius for doing this if he did nought else — following up “Lady, shall I lie in your lap?” with “Do you think I meant country matters?”
Even Robert Burns dropped one, in his poem Yon, yon, yon lassie — probably never read out at Burns Night (though I’d pay good money to see someone unexpectedly read it as the haggis was piped in).
In some ways, it’s even preferable to the proper word vagina, which means sheath (and yes, it’s related to swords) and dates back to when men thought vaginas could fall out if a woman jumped over a fence, and that the womb wandered about the body causing various female conditions — not least hysteria, a word derived from the Greek hystera, meaning womb.
Obviously, language changes. I remember being shocked when Dave Lee Travis said bloody on the radio, yet now I laugh like a drain watching The Thick Of It, when Malcolm Tucker unleashes tirades like “Come the Fred in or Fred the Fred off” or “If some Cora can Fred something up, that Cora will pick the worst possible time to Fredding Fred it up because that Cora’s a Cora.”
A few years back, Specsavers (we still offer reasonable rates, lads or lasses, if you fancy advertising again) ran adverts for French Connection UK, with straplines like “FCUK Spectacles” — we had no complaints, though I fancy our former proprietor Lionel Head turned in his grave so much he’s probably 20 feet further under St Peter’s than when originally buried. He was a man who once told a would-be correspondent named John Thomas to change his name and sling his hook. He would not have been impressed.
Lionel might have been equally unimpressed (though he could also be quite rebellious, so maybe not) with what may be the defining court case: Regina v Seale, when John “Rumpole of the Bailey” Mortimer QC argued that the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bill Hooks album title did not breach the Indecent Advertising Act 1889. Mr Seale was a record store manager, achieving eternal fame for displaying the sleeve.
Dismissing the case, the magistrate said: “Much as my colleagues and I wholeheartedly deplore the vulgar exploitation of the worst instincts of human nature for the purposes of commercial profits by both you and your company, we must reluctantly find you not guilty of each of the four charges.”
Which is probably the result a Cora case would get.
Pistols fans are now in their sixties and seventies, and the album title could be written here in full — except that Never Mind the Bill Hooks is more comical.
As for Cora, given that Chaucer, Shakespeare, Burns and Tucker have all written or uttered the word into popular culture, and given the Bill Hooks ruling, it’s unlikely calls for a prosecution of the Alsager stallholder will — or should — come to anything. Calls for Coun Michael Unett, Pride in Alsager chair, to resign are similarly unlikely to achieve anything, not least because they’re a bit unfair — he wouldn’t have known what the stallholder planned to do.
All that said: I’m no prude and swear considerably more on a daily basis than the next man (or woman), but I’d agree that some words — like sharp knives and Warfarin — should be kept away from children.
You can swear as much as you like in adult conversation — and I warm to strangers very quickly if they turn to amusing profanity — but it has its place. A T-shirt at a family event in a small town in Cheshire is not that place.
Coun Unett should not have to resign; instead, the council clerk — and their counterparts across our area — should pick up the phone and call Winsford Town Council, which organises its town Pride.
We recently reported that a Congleton drag queen complained of being forced to sign a waiver guaranteeing his act would be family-friendly; Winsford’s waiver suddenly seems a whole lot more sensible.
