A modicum of bad language

Parliamentary sketch-writer Simon Hoggart, on the tabling of the famously sweary Alastair Campbell's diaries at the Hutton Inquiry in September 2003:

'The Campbell diaries exploded on top of the Hutton Inquiry like a shellburst over the chateau where the officers are billeted. They were sensational! Right in the very first paragraph he wrote 'G[eoff] H[oon] and I agreed that it would f--- Gilligan if that was his source'.

We gasped. We reeled. The thought that a senior official in the British government would use the word only once in the pages of his diaries was unimaginable! This is a man who probably reads his children stories like Now We Are F---ing Six and The Wind In The F---ing Willows. Were the diaries a forgery? It seemed a real possibility'.

- from Simon Hoggart, The Hands of History, London, 2007