Anyone else slightly surprised to see the word “fart” splashed across a BBC headline?
Perhaps I am being a prude. Perhaps, somewhere along the way, I missed the national memo announcing that “fart” had graduated from the playground, the pub and conversations with small children and was now perfectly acceptable BBC headline language.
But there it was this morning, in enormous letters on the BBC website: “Eight foods that make you fart – and why it’s totally normal.” I nearly spat out my tea.
Not because I am remotely offended by the existence of flatulence. I live in the real world. I am perfectly familiar with the phenomenon. It was simply the extraordinary sight of the BBC announcing it with all the subtlety of a ten-year-old boy who has just discovered whoopee cushions.
And perhaps that silly little headline tells us rather more about what has happened to the BBC than its editors might imagine. There was once something reassuringly grown-up about the corporation. It didn’t have to sound like your mate on WhatsApp. It didn’t have to chase every linguistic fashion or desperately demonstrate how relatable it was. It didn’t need to grab you by the lapels and shout: “LOOK! WE SAID FART!”
It was the BBC. It had authority, standards and a certain restraint. The old BBC might have offered us “Eight foods that can cause wind.” A particularly scientific producer might have ventured “Foods associated with increased flatulence.” But apparently that won’t do in 2026. No. Now your beans make you fart.
And, just in case “fart” wasn’t conversational enough, the BBC helpfully assures us that it is “totally normal”. Totally. How very BBC.
Before anybody writes in, yes, I checked. The BBC has used the word “fart” before. Indeed, people were complaining about precisely this sort of thing 20 years ago. In 2006, a listener complained after a doctor appearing on BBC Radio Stoke repeatedly used “fart”, “farting” and “farts” during a discussion about flatulence. Listeners described the language as “flippant and rude, crude and vulgar”.
The BBC Governors also considered the use of “fart” and “farting” in Doctor Who that year. They concluded that the vast majority of the audience did not regard the words as serious bad language, and noted that they had previously been used in children’s BBC programmes. But people were still complaining.
So perhaps I am not a lone pearl-clutcher after all. There is apparently a proud, two-decade tradition of Britons wondering why the BBC needs to talk about farting.
And the corporation has continued. A BBC description for the children’s programme Incredible Edibles once promised to discover “what would happen if we did not fart”. Then there was the glorious 2018 BBC Sport headline about a darts controversy: “Gary Anderson-Wesley Harms ‘fartgate’: We must get to bottom of it, jokes Barry Hearn.” I’ll concede that one. “Fartgate” and “get to bottom of it” in the same headline is actually quite funny.
But there is surely a difference between the word cropping up in comedy, children’s television or an irresistible story about alleged flatulence at the darts, and BBC editors deciding that “Eight foods that make you fart” is just the ticket for a mainstream BBC news headline.
One half expects tomorrow’s instalments to be “Why you need a poo after coffee – and why that’s totally fine”, followed by “Seven foods that make your wee smell funny” and, perhaps in time for Christmas, “Why sprouts make Granny trump – experts reveal all.”
I exaggerate, obviously, but only to make a point. Language matters, particularly at institutions that once regarded themselves as custodians of standards. This isn’t really about one mildly rude word. Nobody is going to expire from shock because the BBC said “fart”. The interesting question is why the BBC now feels the need to sound like this at all.
There has been a creeping infantilisation of public language. Everything has to be breezy, chatty, “accessible” and relentlessly informal. News organisations increasingly write headlines as though they are competing for the attention of somebody scrolling through social media while waiting for a bus. When even the BBC starts sounding like clickbait, something has changed.
Of course, its defenders will say language evolves, and they’re right. “Fart” isn’t the most offensive word in the English language. It is ancient, widely understood and, in the appropriate circumstances can be funny. But there is such a thing as register.
We don’t speak to a judge in the same way we speak to our friends. A headteacher doesn’t address an assembly like someone shouting across a pub. And a national broadcaster doesn’t have to communicate like an excitable teenager simply because informal language exists. Or at least it didn’t used to.
The BBC’s problem is that this lands against a much bigger debate about what the corporation thinks it is for. For decades, viewers who disagreed furiously about politics could at least recognise the BBC as a serious national institution. It had its faults, certainly, but there was a particular BBC voice: measured, literate, restrained and unmistakably British.
Today, too much of it seems desperate to be fashionable, informal and achingly relatable. And nothing screams effortless relatability quite like a giant bowl of baked beans beneath the word FART.
Perhaps I really am a bit old-fashioned. Perhaps the nation’s standards have moved on and I have been left behind, clutching my pearls and wondering whatever happened to the perfectly serviceable British word “wind”. But I don’t think wanting our national broadcaster to retain a little dignity makes somebody a prude.
There are thousands of words in the English language. One of the great joys of being a writer is choosing the right one for the right occasion. Sometimes “fart” is exactly the right word. During an evening with friends after a glass of wine? Absolutely. When an eight-year-old is convulsed with laughter? Inevitably. At the darts? Apparently essential.
Across the BBC website beneath one of the most famous broadcasting brands on Earth? I’m less convinced.
The funniest thing is that the headline assures us farting is “totally normal”. Yes, BBC. We know. So is going to the lavatory. That doesn’t mean we require eight features about it before breakfast.
Maybe tomorrow we can have the Shipping Forecast back.
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