Irvine Welsh helps Radio 4 to loosen up

It’s not the way Lord Reith would have planned it, but Irvine Welsh, the author of Trainspotting who is famed for his ripe use of language, has prompted a new liberal policy towards swearing at Radio 4.

Interviewed live at the Latitude Festival for Martha Kearney’s Broadcasting House programme on Sunday, the chronicler of the seedy underbelly of Edinburgh naturally responded with the F-word.

Listeners complained that this tone was inappropriate for the programme that came after Sunday Worship. BBC bigwigs, while apologising for any offence caused by Welsh, have decided that Middle England can now handle a bit of vulgar language.

“In general, I think that Radio 4 listeners have a high tolerance for swearing,” said Peter Rippon, editor of Broadcasting House and The World at One. “When we bleep or edit out swearing, listeners argue that we are insulting their intelligence and censoring when we do it.”

This could raise the temperature during Today interviews, but will The Archers succumb to such profanity?

British pop fans seem resistant to Carla Bruni’s charms. Her album, Comme si de rien n’était, entered the Top 40 at, er, No 58 with only 2,914 sales, nestling behind The Best of Petula Clark. Ms Bruni-Sarkozy last night reached No 1 in the French chart. If every Gallic backpacker who brightens HMV’s stores patriotically bought a copy, Carla would surely also be in the top spot over here.

David Gest, ex-paramour of Liza Minnelli and former participant in I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here, is to appear in a video for the up-and-coming five-piece Scottish band Attic Lights that will accompany their first single, Bring You Down. Universal Island Records promises “a rather outlandish and decadent mini-film/ video in the vein of David Lynch and Andy Warhol”.

Kids today. Randy Newman, the elegant American musical satirist, tried to congratulate Lily Allen on her debut album. “I loved that record so much,” he told Word magazine. “But she should have made another one by now, and I told her as much.”

What did she say? “Just kind of grunted. Grunting’s her first damn language!” Newman perhaps comes late to the lingua franca of the young.

The Face: John Barrowman

While volunteering to take a “sexual lie detector” test to discover why he is gay for The Making of Me on BBC One tomorrow, John Barrowman exclaimed that the results were “totally off the scale”.

A family favourite, thanks to his dashing performance as Captain Jack Harkness in Doctor Who, the Glasgow-born actor with the smooth Chicago accent gives every impression of finding the “nature versus nurture” debate an unwelcome diversion in the serious pursuit of having fun.

He was plucked from a solid theatrical career by Russell T.

Davies, the Doctor Who writer.

Since then the BBC has created the Torchwood spin-off to exploit the square- jawed charm of the “multisexual” Jack.

However, Britain may yet lose the 41-year-old star: Captain Jack is in Hollywood to promote his autobiography.

Postscript

Not to give you nightmares, but Amy Winehouse has told OK! that she and her jail-bird husband cannot wait to have children. “I want at least five kids. I want twins,” she said. They also have to be identical. Mercifully it seems that she will have to wait a little longer.

“Talk to your children at least once a week. If you've got time, do it two or three times a week,” was Will Ferrell’s pearl of wisdom, offered to new mother Nicole Kidman at the LA premiere of his film Step Brothers.

Enigmatic and powerful, John Hurt alone knows Merlin’s destiny. Well, at least he will when he takes the role of the Great Dragon in BBC One’s new children’s fantasy epic in the autumn.

Is the modern world annoying Brian May again? This time it’s the recorded voice on Vodafone’s voice message system. “Every time I try to get my messages, I am met with a stupefying, irritating process, which makes me want to strangle someone,” the Queen guitarist grumbles on his blog.

Got a story to tell? people@thetimes.co.uk

Times recommends

• Who killed Jade Goody?
• Daisy Goodwin: This is better than real sex
• Foods that can help to prevent swine flu