Surrender to Your Darkest Dreams, Kids, in Church

As comedian Hasse Alfredson put it many years ago, apropos a Swedish church election:

"Vote for vicar Jansson! Vicar Jansson is a true representative of the Church of Sweden! He has absolutely no opinions on anything!"

Well, I love it! Bring on the music. Once my son performed in the youth talent show accompanying the traditional pancake dinner on Shrove Tuesday at our Episcopal church. He played and sang â uncensored â "Locomotive Breath" by Jethro Tull. (Look up the lyrics if you've forgotten them, or they are before your time!)

I've sung a few rather lewd madrigals in various churches. It is amazing what you can get away with as long as you sing it Italian or Latin.

I have never thought of the Phantom of the Opera (or anything Lord Webber has composed, for that matter) as particularly lewd, morbid or offensive in any way. And the witty Lennon lyric was not even banned by the Beeb to the best of my knowledge. But then, "Please please me" wasn't either...

Here in Germany, English is almost as opaque as Latin to a lot of people. "Bobby Brown (Goes Down)" by Frank Zappa was a big hit for that very reason.

Codero, I work all day to get the money to buy you things. But it's worth it just to hear you say you're gonna give me everything.

Certain English words don't tend to have the same shock value, here in Sweden, that they usually have in the native English speaking countries. Just across the road from my son's primary school there is a bus shelter, in which for several weeks there was an advertisement for an American comedy show on a cable channel. The program in question was the Sarah Silverman show and the advertisement consisted in a picture of Ms Silverman looking back over her shoulder while bent over and pointing to her rear end. The caption to the picture was: "I'm Fucking Matt Damon" (and no censorship of any fucking word!).

I've made similar mistakes in conversation. Expletives just don't pack the same visceral punch in your second language. A few years ago I gave a talk at a conference in Orkney and managed to say "oh fuck" in front of 70 UK colleagues when something went wrong with my slide show.

A Swedish colleague of mine did the same thing at a conference recently (except she said "Oh Shit!" when the powerpoint crashed).
Funnily enough the kids in my sons primary school seem to use English curse expressions quite often - my son is always coming out with "Shit!" and "What the Fuck!" that he's picked up from his classmates - none of whom (apart from him) speak any English!