I’ve told off other kids for swearing – but I’d give the ice cream girl a free pass

Telling kids off for using bad language is all very well, says Will Gore – but sometimes a youthful expletive should be forgiven

X/Twitter was sent into near meltdown by a video of a young girl who had worked herself into a fit of incandescence over the prices being charged by a nearby ice cream van (Getty)

There are times – many times these days – when you wonder whether there is any point persisting with social media. But then, every so often, along comes a sweary child, putting the world to rights, and all the desultory scrolling becomes worth it.

On Thursday and Friday, X/Twitter was sent into near meltdown by a video of a young girl – perhaps eight or nine years old – who had worked herself into a fit of incandescence over the prices being charged by a nearby ice cream van.

With eyes burning, she raged to a handy phone camera at the idea of selling “just two ice creams... for bloody nine pounds!” Not that she was going to be sucked into a purchase – and would anyone else? The kid plainly doubted it. “He’s gonna get nowhere with that!” she railed in a broad Burnley drawl, to a woman we presumed to be her mother. And if the cost was one problem, another was that the ice cream seller “only does bloody cards. And I’m stood there with me cash! Bloody hell.”

Turning away in disgust, with a final “bloody well bad” for good measure, the girl ends her tirade with a glance over her shoulder, before spitting out the words: “I bet he can hear me.” Here’s hoping. I mean, nine quid for two ice creams? Bloody hell indeed.

Not everyone loves an angry expletive in the mouth of a child, even one of the mildest variety. “Horrible,” came one response on X. “Her parents and teachers should be ashamed.” A few others were equally censorious.

I’ve sometimes had occasion to take issue with swearing by other people’s children. There was the nine-year-old friend of my daughter who, in the back seat of our car, started on about how a particular teacher at school was a “total c**k”. And my son had a couple of mates who were early effers and jeffers, and who needed to be reminded that I wasn’t wild about their potty-mouthed references to other lads in their class.

But there is a fundamental difference between swearing as a means of abuse and using strong language as an expression of anger or outrage. A video of a child calling an ice-cream seller a “f***ing a**hole” might go equally viral on X, but I doubt most people would be delighted by it.

By contrast, a kid using pretty mild swear words about the cost of their hoped-for treat simply emphasises the degree of their exasperation, which becomes a wonder to behold.

What’s more, in this instance, it’s an exasperation that resonates. There can’t be many people who, at some point in the time since Covid, global conflicts and Trussonomics sent inflation into the stratosphere, have not looked at the price of goods and been taken aback. Dairy products are barely the half of it – imagine if our ice-cream girl had been in the market for some olive oil.

We also perhaps share that sense of wondering how exactly such prices can be justified. Most adults probably feel embarrassed to query the business practices of shops and service providers, even if prices are shocking. We’d rather accept that it’s a product of external forces than think we’re victims of profiteering. Not so an innocently combative child, who simply cannot understand how anyone would be able to get away with charging so much – especially when there is another ice cream van “on my street” where you can apparently pick up the same product for a pound or two.

By Saturday evening, the 40-second video had been watched well over 5 million times, and the overwhelming majority of people piling in with their views were perfectly prepared to overlook the bad language of its primary protagonist – in large part because she spoke a truth many feel.

The cost of living crisis remains acute for an awful lot of people in the UK, even as the rate of inflation slowly declines. Ice creams in Burnley are, it turns out, emblematic of our wider economic angst. And sweary ice-cream girl turns out to be the unexpected – but utterly on point – voice of Britain in 2024.

Bloody hell.