The turning point may have come after a Chicago policeman, testifying in an obscenity trial, was asked how a movie made him feel.

WSJ: Roger Ebert on Movie Ratings

He apologizes for using an obscenity, and proceeds to talk, in a serious tone now, about providing his extended family member with new tires like mine.

NEWYORKER: Baptizing the Gun

Such was the Briton's annoyance with the turnaround in fortunes that he received a second code violation in two days for an audible obscenity.

BBC: Hewitt breaks Henman resolve

They also include Matthew McConaughey, who in the small role of a talent agent obsessed with providing TiVo to his client, all but walks off with the picture, and an uncredited, wholly unrecognizable Tom Cruise, playing a large, bald, obscenity-spewing studio head who in the privacy of his very large office shows himself to be lord of the funk.

WSJ: 'Vicky Cristina' Is Slim, Charming Allen Roundelay

Its broadcast prompted an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons, proposed by a group of Conservative MPS, entitled Television Obscenity.

BBC: Tony Harrison to perform controversial poem V on Radio 4