From the B-word to the Q-word: an alphabet of offence.

‘The first time I read the B-word, I went through the alphabet in my head.’ (Illustration: Andy Goodman/The Guardian)

At a book signing in London a few years back, I met a woman who’d just gone on a date with a man she had met online. “He mentioned over dinner that he had a fear of the C-word,” she told me…