IT was all going great. Almost a week of my three-week run at the Fringe had sailed past, audiences were as lovely as ever and it seemed, against all the odds, that this show might just be funny.

The thing about the Fringe is that there's lots of coming and going. Occasionally folk are forced to leave a show early in order that they can get to their next on time. Every now and again a body from the darkness will realise that they have entered the wrong room and that the slightly overweight Glaswegian Sikh that walked in to the blaring sound of The Fratellis isn't the Korean shadow puppet play focusing on the duality of nationhood set in a nuclear reactor. (It is the Fringe, after all).

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About 10 minutes into my show a middle-aged, Church of Scotland-looking couple decided tae leave. They didn't look like the Korean shadow puppetry type. (The door to my venue is right by the stage so there is no such thing as a low-key exit)

“Was I sh***?” I asked…

Mr Church-of-Scotland-type riposted immediately: “You don't need to swear so much. You don't swear on radio 4. You're funny, so don't swear ...”

And with that, he was gone. I think the irony was lost on him that this occurred on the selfsame day that judge Patricia Lynch QC won the hearts of many by telling a 50-year-old career racist who had just referred to her as the “C” word that he too was “a bit of a “C-word”. He then suggested she self-copulate; she returned the compliment.

(I realise that for many readers the most offensive C-word we know is ‘Conservative”. This is the other one ...)

Swearing. It’s a funny thing. It genuinely divides a room. I have nothing but admiration for Patricia Lynch, in standing up to what seems to be, by all accounts, a horrible man. But she’s now under investigation for an inappropriate use of language.

For me it's all about context. I have never and will never swear on air. I have never sworn in my many years of column writing. The written expletive is quite, quite different from the gently spoken swearing word. My children grew up with a father that seldom censored his language. From a young age, not only did they know every expletive but, and this is crucial, they knew the correct context of use. And then there is the thorny notion of intent. Do I intend to upset/offend/abuse you when swearing? I seldom do. But who can possibly imagine the degree of intent on anyone else's part?

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Glaswegians swear differently from most folk I know. Glasgow is the only city in the world where you can be endearingly referred to as “a good c***”. Had I not witnessed, with my own brown eyes, a granny call her grandchild exactly that, I wouldn't have believed it.

In these most politically correct of times we cannot, we must not, censor ourselves into oblivion. I know exactly how the judge felt when she was affronted by the accused’s tirade. Sometimes fire can only be fought with fire. I have no idea why the Church of Scotland-looking couple left my gig. Do words really offend them so much that they are unable to endure them? I grew up being told that sticks and stones could create bone breakages; words couldn't hurt. And while that wasn't altogether true, I do wonder what folk expect when they turn up at a comedy gig at the Fringe?

Maybe I swear too much. Maybe I could swear less. But is that really the point? If we start deciding on which words are acceptable and which are not, where do we stop?

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It makes me smile to think that both I and a decorated judge were chastised for swearing. The difference is that I'll be back in the same room swearing again. I hope she never has to.