IT IS a crisp Monday morning in the centre of Bournemouth’s Christmas market. Pine cones and holly weave around the roofs of the mahogany cabins lit by fairy lights, while Santa Claus is Coming to Town echoes through the gatherings of rosy-cheeked smiles.

In the midst of the market, standing next to a festively decorated merry-go-round, a father standing next to his baby daughter lets out a loud F-word about the person he is waiting for.

He continues to swear for another few minutes, his daughter silently listening and learning, as passers-by frown their disapproval.

Swearing even today is a controversial issue.

Mr Justice Bean caused outrage by arguing in the Court of Appeal that foul language should no longer be considered offensive due to it being heard “all too frequently”.

The statement came in the case a man trying to revoke his conviction for verbally abusing police officers in Hackney last year. The judge said the language was unlikely to cause “harassment, alarm or distress” to the officers. who would find it “rather commonplace”.

Most people swear from time to time, but some seem to insert an expletive into practically every sentence. Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay once swore 243 times in one of his television shows Gordon’s Great British Nightmare, equating to one expletive for every 20 seconds on screen.

Have celebrities like Gordon Ramsay loosened our once stiff upper lip when it comes to colourful language?

More recently, X Factor contestant Frankie Cocozza was in trouble for letting out a four-letter expletive on live TV.

Retired Bournemouth couple Terry and Geraldine Harper believe people pick up the bad habit at school and from there it becomes natural behaviour: “It’s relaxed – it’s an everyday language for some people.

“There’s a time and place for swearing, but that’s not on the streets or around children.”

Product design student Kieran Jackon, aged 26, admitted to dropping an extreme swear-word earlier that day in public, but remembered he was quite different as a child: “Swearing around the dinner table was always a ‘big thing’ for my parents, now they are a little more relaxed. But you’d still receive a slap around the ear for it.”

A big issue seller, aged 35, who wished to remain anonymous, said he typically hears people swearing mainly in the “evening after a few drinks” – often from the people shouting at him to “get a job”.

The Home Office is also debating whether swearing at others is a legal offence. Discussions are being held over whether to remove the word “insulting” from the description of the public order offence which currently reads as: “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour.”

However, Dorset author Martin Baum – writer of To Be or Not To Be, Innit, a Yoof-Speak Guide to Shakespeare – believes legalising swearing at public figures would “would eat away at the power of authority”.

Swearing at officials showed a blatant “lack of respect”, he said.

There’s an old British saying: “There is a time and place for everything”.