“This show is family friendly, apart from your grandma, so she can f*ck off!”
Thus opens the foul-mouthed Simon Donald, donning typical private school headmaster robes and mortarboard, and gliding into the auditorium like a slightly more ginger and slightly less creepy Professor Snape. We are consequently taught a history lesson: learning about the roots of several of our favourite (and least favourite) swear-words, all the while interspersed with abrupt explosions of unexpected curses, leaving us paralysed with laughter.
Surprisingly, the show did have a decent structure and wasn’t just an excuse to swear as many times as physically possible within a show - in fact, given the topic of the evening, swearing wasn’t quite as prominent as might have been expected. Donald introduced ‘celebrity swears’, which were videos of famous people recounting their favourite swear words, after which we were given a brief history of that word. Some of them were surprising, some merely disappointing. Two members of the audience were also required to take a written test, which involved filling in the blanks in several sentences with swear words. The results were both interesting and utterly hilarious.
Donald is surprisingly knowledgeable within the topic area and adds a layer to the show with genuinely interesting facts about the etymology of swear words, although upon further research not all of them were entirely accurate.
As expected, this show is not for those easily offended, but for those who can take a fair amount of profanity, Simon Donald’s School of Swearing will for the most part, entertain and enthral. Who knows, he may even teach you some words you’ve never heard before.
