School for Swearing

One of London's most notoriously foul-mouthed denizens has revealed how he has helped many of Britain's top celebrities rise to fame through his school for swearing. "Mastering the correct use of swear words is the key to media success these days," declares Declan Fook, who is well known around the capital for standing on street corners spewing abuse. "The strategic use of a 'fuck' or 'arsehole' in an interview immediately confers a degree of street-credibility, marking the user out as 'edgy' and 'dangerous'." Fook believes that training in the use of such language is essential. "The indiscriminate and gratuitous use of swearing will have the opposite effect, and simply make the user look like an ignorant moron," he says. "Just look at Gordon Ramsey." Indeed, the filthy mouthed chef is one of Fook's rare failures. "He attended a couple of classes, but thought he knew better," recalls Fook. "You can see the sorry results on TV every week - a pitifully small vocabulary of expletives. He just keeps saying 'fuck' over and over again until becomes utterly meaningless."

Amongst Fook's successes are self-styled comedian Russell Brand, alleged film director Guy Ritchie and songstresses Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen. "Before they enrolled in my classes they were all terribly well-spoken and middle class," he claims. "Nobody in the world of popular entertainment would have taken them seriously." According to Fook, Guy Ritchie posed a particular challenge. "It took hours of personal tuition to get him to stop swearing in that posh accent of his - posh swearing just doesn't have the same impact as street swearing," he muses. "Even worse, he kept falling under the swearing influence of his wife Madonna and using the much less American pronunciations - 'ass' just doesn't have the same ring as 'arse'." Fook is particularly proud of Lily Allen. "She was just a demure private-school educated middle class girl when she came to me," he says. "But we soon had her swearing like a trooper - just like her father Keith, one of my first and best students. You wouldn't believe how posh and timid he was when I first met him!"

Swearing has become an essential skill for performers who want to reach a mass audience. "It's no use going on stage in front of an audience of inebriated students in Preston and trying to crack jokes in a public school accent - they'll just tear you apart," Fook explains. "That's precisely what happened to Russell Brand when he started in the business. He tried everything to get enough street cred to survive in stand up: cocaine, booze, the lot. All in vain. Then he came to me - once he'd learned how to cuss properly, he was away!" Swearing is the secret to populist success, Fook believes, because it allows entertainers - who are predominantly middle-class - to communicate more directly with their working class audiences. "Swearing screams 'I'm a working class geezer'," he opines, rejecting allegations that he is simply perpetuating out dated social stereotypes. "The lack of vocabulary it implies encapsulates the speech patterns of the lower orders." Fook is keen to emphasise that his school for swearing isn't exclusive to celebrities. "With increasing numbers of middle class professionals 'down shifting' and switching to trades like plumbing and cab driving, we're doing good business getting them up to speed with the right vocabulary," he claims. "Customers expect their tradesmen to eff and blind liberally, not speak like accountants or stockbrokers. It undermines their ability to feel superior to them otherwise."