Culture

Welsh painter masters the art of swearing with unique explicit project

31 Jul 2021 4 minute read

The painting that spawned Sweary Tales – Jimmy in Quadrophenia

David Owens

Welsh artist Richard Lewis hasn’t so much created a vanity project as a profanity project.

His ingenious, unique idea of taking great moments of swearing from entertainment history and transforming them into paintings has resulted in a multi-decade leap across the cultural zeitgeist.

Sweary Tales, as it is called, has seen the artist – originally from Cardiff but who now lives in London – build up a collection of paintings, which he ultimately hopes to publish in a book.

Richard, who tongue-in-cheek describes himself as an archeologist of swearing, has created a creative tour-de-force which is wildly entertaining and highly educational.

So if you wanted to see a painting of the first time the F word was said in a movie or w**ker used on the big screen, then you are in luck, the artist’s impressive array of paintings will more than meet your needs.

“The idea for the paintings didn’t start immediately,” he says. “My original idea was to create giant paintings of some of my favourite cinema moments.

“I did a painting from a famous scene in Quadrophenia, when the lead character, mod Jimmy is riding his Lambretta scooter and he collides with a post office van. He screams at the postman ‘Mr Postman f*** off’, which is one of the greatest lines in cinema history.

“At that point it was just a painting of the scene. There was no speech bubble with it.”

Artist and ‘curator of swearing’ Richard Lewis

However, the artwork led him down an expletive laden path.

“I had this thought – which was like one of those pub quiz questions – who was the first person to say the F word in a movie,” he recalls.

“I discovered it was Marianne Faithfull in a 1967 movie directed by Michael Winner called ‘I’ll Never Forget What’s’isname’. She screams it at Oliver Reed.

“Then it got me thinking again, when was the first time someone said w**ker in a film? That was said by Harry H Corbett in a Steptoe and Son movie.

And naturally, as these things surely go, his next quest was to unearth who was responsible for the first C word on screen.

“I found that the first C word was in a Hollywood film from 1970 called ‘The Boys In The Band’,” he informs me.

The Sweary Tales project naturally evolved given the artist’s long held fascination with the subject grew.

“It wasn’t just the historical part of it that I’ve enjoyed,” he says. “I’ve always been fascinated by swearing and the illicit nature of it, especially when it’s done well.”

Growing up on a council estate in Cardiff in the ‘70s and ‘80s, he jokes that he was exposed to swearing from an early age, but that two comedy legends galvanised his explicit love of an expletive.

“I grew up with Derek and Clive as a kid, which was incredibly explicit, especially with Peter Cook and that nice Dudley Moore off the telly saying the most obscene words,” he says.

“And I just love a really good use of swearing. So that’s where the project started.”

Sweary Tales book

Many of his paintings are from films, some are from TV, others from famous incidents (and yes that Bill Grundy Sex Pistols’ encounter will be in there) and those that have a certain mythology attached to them, but all have expletives at their heart.

“I’d say it’s historical and educational, but I like to think it’s meant to amuse and educate at the same time,” he says.

“I mean, in one respect it’s quite a niche subject, but then at the same time, everyone I speak to when I tell them I’d like to turn this into a book, they all say I’d buy two copies of that. I think it’s a subject that fascinates people.”

Thankfully with an encyclopaedic knowledge of culture through the decades, Richard has plenty to occupy his time as the Sweary Tales project grows.

“I’ve got like at least another 30 in mind, and I reckon I need to paint another 50 at least for it to work in a book.

“Swearing has always been around and will always be around. It’s handed down through the generations.

“I wouldn’t be doing my job properly if I’m not educating the kids now.”

Find out more about Sweary Tales via Richard’s website and Instagram

RICHARD EXPLAINS THE STORIES BEHIND HIS SWEARY TALES ART

It would be a crime to not include Alexi Sayle and his unforgettable creation Mister Sweary in The Project. Sayle would often close his live stand-up comedy set in the 80’s with this character – a Cockney yob in a tight suit and leather trilby with a foul mouth of machine gun expletives. ( I had to edit the swearing from the original transcript – if I’d included all the number of words said, it would’ve taken me another 2 pages to complete.)

This shows a notorious moment on the American 70’s game show The NewlyWed Game when a contestant badly misunderstood the question. For years this was thought to be an apocryphal tale, but thanks to the the original videotape being found a few years back, this did indeed happen.

This involves a salty anecdote about when comedy scriptwriters Ray Galton and Alan Simpson met actor George Sanders. They all met during the making of the 1961 comedy film The Rebel starring Tony Hancock. Sanders had one of the most glorious voices of all time ( he memorably voiced Shere Khan the tiger in the original Disney animated Jungle Book ), so to imagine him telling this foul-mouthed confession in those posh fruity tones makes it all even funnier.

This accidentally rude moment depicts the time TV presenter Dickie Davies made an unfortunate verbal slip on live TV show World Of Sport. Some people watching this clip on YouTube think they can hear Dickie say “c**ksucker” instead, but they’re wrong. Besides, Cop sucker as an image is way more hilarious.

This Sweary artwork records a notorious Doctor Who outtake, when Tom Baker as The Doctor drops the f-bomb at his loyal robotic dog K-9. The clip was originally included on a private BBC compilation of bloopers only intended to be seen by BBC video tape operators at their annual Christmas party. Knowing what a wonderfully entertaining bloke Mr Baker is, I do wonder if he deliberately dropped a few salty words during filming purely for the amusement of the Beeb staff at their Christmas shindig.

The film follows Dylan and his 1965 tour of the UK in a fly on the wall stylee. Dylan is quite a snarky so-so in various scenes, most memorably in an incident at a party in a hotel after a gig in Manchester. One of the partygoers throws a glass from a window into the street below which causes a right old kerfuffle. Bob goes ballistic trying to find the culprit. He collars a very drunk Mancunian bloke he believes to be the glass thrower. (This guy looks and speaks not unlike like a young Ian Brown of The Stone Roses) He denies chucking the glass, but Bobby ain’t having none of it and continues goading the lad. What’s amazing is how unimpressed the guy is with Dylan’s celebrity, even though it’s his party. Maybe it’s the booze, but the Manc bloke gives Bob as good as he gets ( even if he doesn’t have Dylan’s superior line in vindictive barbs.) Dylan also instructs the accused glass lobber to “BE GROOVY OR LEAVE, MAN!” I’ve always thought this immortal line should be on a t-shirt, but research showed somebody already beat me to this.

I love a historical first, and as far as I’m aware the use of the word “twat” was first allowed in a movie in Ken Loach’s 1969 masterpiece Kes. Adapted from Barry Hine’s novel A Kestrel For A Knave, Kes tells the story of 15 year old Billy Casper, his grim future in a tough Northern England town, and his moving relationship with a young kestrel he discovers and trains. In this opening scene, Billy portrayed by David Bradley is being taunted about his hopeless job prospects by his thug bully older brother Jud played by Freddie Fletcher.

Whenever I ask people who they think was the first person to say the F-word in a British movie, over half will say Oliver Reed. To quote Roy Walker from Catchphrase, it’s good but it’s not right. However, the F-bomb in question is actually directed AT Reed in a movie he stars in. The honour for the first use of fuck in a British flick goes to the iconic Marianne Faithfull in the 1967 Michael Winner film I’ll Never Forget Whats’Isname. Marianne plays Ollie’s mistress Josie in this satire on the advertising industry set in Swinging London. She yells the historic expletive at Reed towards the film’s end, which is craftily muffled by the horn beep of a passing car to no doubt get it by the censor. But you don’t need to be a lip-reader to see Marianne make cinematic history in this scene.

This features a line from the criminally underrated 1997 British gangster movie Mojo, written and directed by the brilliant Jez Butterworth and adapted from his own 1995 stage play. Set in 50’s Soho, Mojo is a black comedy following a gang of inept gangsters who find themselves in a pickle when when their boss Erza ( played by Ricky Tomlinson ) who also owns The Atlantic nightclub is discovered murdered by rival gangsters. The movie has a cracking cast, including Aiden Gillen, Ian Hart, Ewan Bremner, and most noticeably Harold Pinter – genuinely terrifying as a psychotic gangster boss. I saw it in the cinema when it originally came out and loved it, especially this hilariously misanthropic line said by Potts ( played by a young Andy Serkis ) about his challenging friendship with Baby (played by Aiden Gillen.)

The artwork shows a classic interview moment with Sid Vicious of The Sex Pistols. I’m not a big fan of the swastika-wearing girlfriend-murdering junkie bass-plunker, but his reply to this question is so hilariously nihilistic and misanthropic, its worthy of Derek & Clive at their best.

This painting of a schoolgirl giving an unfortunately wrong answer on a live 1960’s TV school quiz may be apocryphal. No film or audio footage of it exists, and I only discovered it when reading a biography of comedian Tony Hancock who supposedly watched it and described it’s obscene hilarity to a friend. The lack of any TV clip of this incident meant I had to imagine what it might have looked like. So the quizmaster is based on Geoffrey Wheeler who used to host school quiz Bottom Of The Form, and I wanted the girl to have the classic swot look, so used a Velma from Scooby Doo lookalike here.

This painting involves a historic use of a rude gesture rather than swear words in British cinema. The Goose Steps Out is a 1941 comedy starring beloved comedian Will Hay. Hay plays a bumbling teacher who turns out to be the double of German spy captured by British intelligence. Hay is flown to Nazi Germany to masquerade as the spy and to find and bring back secrets of a new German weapon. At one point Hay has to lecture a room full of Hitler Youth on British customs and habits. When he’s asked what the British equivalent of the Seig Heil is, Hay takes the opportunity to cheekily introduce them to the V-sign as a form of salute. In a hilarious scene, he gets the entire room to salute a giant portrait of Hitler on the wall by having the Nazis all flick the V’s at the Führer. What makes this movie moment so powerful is it being allowed in a British movie back then. The thought of this obscene finger insult being permitted in a film before World War 2 would’ve been unthinkable (though it is briefly seen in a 1901 documentary when a factory worker outside a Rotherham steelworks objecting to being filmed sticks his fingers up). But with WW2 raging away, British morale needed to be kept up. So the censors looked the other way from Will and his unforgettable two-fingered salute to the Führer’s face.

When was the first C-word said in a mainstream movie? Early research made me think it was said by Jack Nicholson in the 1971 film Carnal Knowledge, but it seems it was beaten to that accolade by 1970’s groundbreaking LGBT drama The Boys In The Band. Originally a 1968 off-Broadway play written by Mart Crowley, the movie version directed by William Friedkin of The Exorcist fame was pioneering for having a cast of gay actors who were all openly out. The C-bomb is dropped by actor Kenneth Nelson as acid-tongued party host Mike to another guest. Cunt had been uttered before in a few obscure underground art movies, but the casually vicious way it’s used here still packs a wallop.

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