I have a dictionary of Forbidden American English, and I get the impression that there are far more rude words in British English than American, despite the British reputation for not being forthright. I suspect the f*** word is used far more in American usage and possibly less offensively, precisely because the English have a far wider range of equivalent, and f*** can be used as an extreme. Mind you when I grew up, I never heard the f*** word ever used. I was taught to regard bloody and damn as the limits of language, never to be used by me.
The version I knew of the song was specific to the University of Oxford in the days of all male colleges, which I remember from somewhere went:
If you want to bugger a hedgehog
It rolls itself into a ball,
And eminent scientists tell us
It never gets buggered at all.
But further intensive researches
Have incontrovertibly shown
That at Magdalen * such sexual immunity
Is enjoyed by the hedgehog alone.
* or Keble, Christ Church, Pembroke or other two syllable male college.
I think I am allowed a
in the circumstances.
