A GOOD proportion of the news these days is made us of surveys.

We will be told that half of us don’t like Mondays or ten per cent of Brits don’t indicate before turning left at a roundabout. In real life that number would be much higher.

I have always said the surveys are biased and untrustworthy. I’m an introvert and I am sure we are under-represented in the data.

If I see someone with a clipboard walking towards me in the street I’ll be gone.

I didn’t realise that one of the surveys that people have been doing looks at the list of the UK’s most popular swear words. It’s a difficult topic to write about seeing as I can’t use any of the words but here goes.

Previously the most used naughty word was a B one. I know there are a lot of B-words but they’re never too harsh. You could get away with a B level swear word in a lot of situations. I wouldn’t use one in church if I were you but you could mumble one if someone has just pushed in front of you in a Post Office queue especially if it’s teamed up with it’s favourite companion “hell”.

Sadly the use of that mild swear word has seen an 80 per cent reduction. The new winner is one that starts with the sixth letter of the alphabet.

When I saw what was the most commonly used bit of potty mouth I was saddened. Has life because so hard that we find ourselves using language like that? Are we all so uncouth that we drop the harshest of swear words all the time?

If you hear someone saying it you find yourself on edge. Do we want to be so aggressive?

Then I realised the popularity of the new top swear word could be because it is so useful. It works as an exclamation, like a lot of swear words. It’s also a verb. You can put it before the word “off” and have great effect.

If something hasn’t gone well you can use the past tense to describe it. If things are really bad pop an “up” after the past tense and you’re really cooking on gas.

Conjugate it with an “ing” at the and end you can put it anywhere in a sentence. In the classic typing sample “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” the only places you can’t use it is before both of the “the” words.

There is some hope. Overall swearword usage has dropped 27 per cent over 20 years. With the year we’ve had that’s a conjugated swear word miracle.