Dr Stephens, from Keele’s school of psychology, came up with the idea for the study after swearing when he accidentally hit his thumb with a hammer as he built a garden shed.

It’s not all free-licence for Messrs Ramsey, Connolly, and Bloody-Wilson, as the study suggests that frequent casual swearers will gain less benefit than people who ordinarily mind their P’s and Q’s.

The scientific method was described, thus:

He recruited 64 volunteers to take part and each individual was asked to submerge their hand in a tub of freezing water for as long as possible while repeating a swear word of their choice.

They were then asked to repeat the experiment, this time using a more commonplace word that they would use to describe a table.

The article doesn’t mention how many swearwords Dr Stephens heard when he went around asking people if they’d submerge their hand in a tub of freezing water.  It’s a shame that frequency of casual swearing has a dilutive effect on the efficacy of the phenomenon, because it would be disadvantageous to all those people who commonly refer to a table as a “cock-platform”.

You know who you all are…