New Zealand comedy duo Flight of the Conchords, consisting of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, had a two-season TV series in 2007–09 full of inspired parody and goofy adventures. The show’s language is generally mild or euphemised:
So when truly strong language is called for, it’s a big deal. Here, mild-mannered and long-suffering band manager Murray Hewitt finally loses his patience:
“Oh Murray, you wouldn’t swear at us,” pleads Bret. But he does, and you can see the depth of misery and anger that drive him to such shocking extremes:
In happier times, Bret and Jemaine – who are a bit innocent – learn to flip the bird from their friend Devjeet Mohumbhai (Bret: “Yeah, but try putting some wings on your bird… there we go, that’s much nicer”):
And now for two musical numbers. Where the Four Femmes’ ‘Woman Up’ had minge, muff, rug and lady garden, Conchords’ club anthem ‘Too Many Dicks on the Dance-Floor’ has dongs, schlongs, rods and cattle-prods:
Tell the fellas, make it understood
It ain’t no good if there’s too much wood.
Make sure you know, before you go
The dance-floor bro:ho ratio
Five-to-one is a brodeo,
Tell Steve and Mark it’s time to go.
Not only are there too many dicks…
In the clip below, the ‘Mutha’uckas’ song begins at 2:33, but the preamble gives it context. As far as I know, the delivery wasn’t minced like this for TV or anything like that; it’s how they’ve always sung it. It’s funnier that way:
Strong Language 
I love FOTC! Fun post!
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Thanks! I love them too, and it was fun picking out the pseudo-sweary bits. I’m sure I overlooked a few.
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Easy to do – I spend so much time laughing when I watch that I catch something new every time!
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fun article and thanks for including the clips, saved me opening a new tab which as we all know is maximum effort.
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I ended up changing a couple of the clips after publishing the post, because embedding them gave this annoying result:
In some cases all the alternatives did the same thing. : /
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mate I can’t even work out how to include an image in my posts with the current layout so I bow down to you!
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Love FOTC and love this post! And this blog. I love swearing, it’s great fun and I do swear in my blog but only if necessary. Because sometimes NO OTHER WORD WILL DO!
But I can also appreciate the skill that goes into implicit swearing. Terry Pratchett was always really good at that – you get the meaning well enough, and the ways he found to ‘unswear’ were even funnier because he’d take his time to set it up. Any fans out there? Ever gone ‘Librarian Poo’ at someone? 🙂
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Thanks, Michelle! I agree, swearing and not swearing (or ‘unswearing’) are a lot of fun, especially when done creatively. I never read much Pratchett, but I’m sure some of our readers and writers are fans.
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