This time last year, Andy Gray and Richard Keys were getting their jotters from a national broadcaster for indulging in dated locker-room “banter” when they thought no one was listening, despite being sat in front of a bank of cameras and recording equipment. It provoked a debate along the lines of this thread on a national scale.
I’m with TJ and the handwringing do-gooders on this one. I’m no prude but “banter” which implies, jokes about or normalises violent, unconsensual sex is bad form. So “kicking back doors in”, “would you smash it”, “that winger’s raped the full-back all day long” – I would think less of anyone, mates included, who use this terminology.
Unless you’re in among likeminded souls in some porn dungeon chatroom that caters for that sort of thing, or amongst mates and out of earshot of anyone you think might be offended. But this is an open forum, read by thousands of people you don’t know, so expect to be called out by someone if anything you’re saying is something you wouldn’t air in polite company.
If a sweaty-palmed, hairy-knuckled dwarf like Richard Keys is the poster-boy for your conduct towards others, then you’re welcome to it. The irony is that, as with most perpetrators of this type of patter, in real life, you can’t imagine them whispering “hello” under the garden gate, far less getting near anyone’s back door.
