TWO of our sons, who share a flat in London, sent us a short, amusing video of the pair of them watching the England v Columbia penalty shoot-out together.

One of them was hiding behind the sofa. The other had his hands over his eyes.

And then one of them uttered the F-word. And his brother joined in. “Oh, that doesn’t sound good,” said my husband, shaking his head. “It’s horrible,” I agreed.

When it comes to your children swearing, I’m right behind Bryan Ferry. When the Wearside-born rock star and his family appeared to be moments from death as their plane plummeted to the ground after a mentally ill passenger dashed into the cockpit and grabbed the controls in 2000, he calmly told his son Isaac to stop swearing, while fellow passengers freaked out around them.

There’s a man who has clearly got his priorities right.

Because as Bryan would probably say: even in the midst of life-threatening disaster, swearing is not big and it’s not clever. And, as I’ve told my boys often enough, you should have a good enough vocabulary to think of alternatives to better sum up your emotions.

Of course, I can see the defects in these arguments. Sometimes a perfectly placed expletive, in the correct context and delivered with gusto, can be both big and clever, as well as hilarious.

Such as Danny Dyer’s recent expletive-loaded diatribe, demanding to know why former prime minister David Cameron was able to relax in France, with his ‘trotters up’, while the rest of Britain deals with the consequences of Brexit.

Dyer’s pithy analysis included the T-word, twice. The second time, he deployed it, rather brilliantly, like an exclamation mark. His performance was retweeted thousands of times, with BBC presenter Jeremy Vine pronouncing: ‘That second T*** is everything’.

The contention that those who swear have a limited vocabulary has its flaws too. I recall one of my sons coming out of primary school and announcing, in front of a large group parents, that the sex education lesson he’d had that day was ‘crap’.

“Where did you hear that word?” I replied, as loudly as I could, because it’s very important, in these situations, to make it known your child couldn’t possibly have heard that word at home.

“But it’s in the Roald Dahl book I’m reading,” he said, a puzzled look on his face.

Rude words and vulgarities appear throughout literature, from Shakespeare to DH Lawrence, Mark Twain and James Joyce.

I know all this, along with the fact that research by University of Keele scientists found swearing helps people cope better with pain. Because who hasn’t ever stubbed their toe or banged their finger and come out with a stream of expletives which would make a docker blush?

I confess I’m not totally averse, on rare occasions - never in anger, only in the right setting and mindful of my audience - to using the odd, judiciously placed obscenity for added emphasis.

But still, like Ferry - a man so cool and laid back I doubt if even the mildest profanity has ever passed his lips – I recoiled to hear my boys, even if they are now 24 and 22, swear.

From when they were tiny, we applied a zero tolerance policy to the use of coarse language. Although, with five lively boys to keep under control, we slapped a zero tolerance policy on most misdemeanors, in the desperate hope some of them might work, and they didn’t always.

But apart from once, when Charlie had a nightmare and swore in his sleep, I never heard any of them swear. (And I didn’t think it was fair to reprimand him on that occasion, since people have got off murder charges after arguing in court they were sleepwalking at the time and therefore couldn’t be responsible for their actions).

I’ve no doubt they embraced such choice language when with their friends and well out of earshot, but throughout all the time they were at home, and in all the years since, they have managed to bite their tongues in front of me. Until now.

As I write this, England’s semi-final match is yet to be played. And I have suggested to my sons that, should they feel the need to let off steam during tense points in the game, they should take a leaf out of their Irish cousins’ book.

In the Emerald Isle, we substitute the word ‘feck’ for a well-known profanity. In Irish, it’s an early 19th Century word which means ‘to keep a look out’ or ‘to steal’. So it’s technically not a swear word.

As you read this column, you will know the result. All I can say is, I hope it’s fecking coming home this time.