SORROWS, said the bard, come not single spies, but in battalions, and the same could be said of any kind of trouble; trouble is like that first domino which, falling, sets off all the rest.

Cut-price airline Ryanair is probably saying: "Yeah," resignedly.

Last week the company was ordered to pay a total of £1,336 to a cerebral palsy sufferer whom it charged £18 (twice the cost of his flight) for the use of a wheelchair.

On Tuesday, the EU declared its Charleroi airgport subsidy illegal, and repayable, and on Wednesday, the Advertising Standards Authority rapped its knuckles over an attempt at "humour in a November 5 advertisement.

The allusion in "Fawking great offers" was rather too clear for some readers of a national newspaper. Too right. I was one.

I can't object, without risk to limb if not life, to the almost unconscious use of that word every day, everywhere, by all ages. You all know it; this is a family newspaper.

Such a clear reference over my Allbran was, however, a step too far, implying that we'd find the pun amusing, as if the word was part of our everyday speech. Not of mine, Ryanair.

Straight after breakfast, I rang the ASA to register a complaint and the voice at the other end knew why before I told her. The ASA has backed those who thought the advert "offensive and unsuitable for display in a national newspaper".

The adjudication says the advertisers intended to be humorous and did not believe it would cause widespread offence, and that the newspaper claimed the actual word was not used and a play on words did not constitute a serious offence. The ASA disagreed and told the advertisers "not to repeat the approach".

It's a small victory and, sad to say, rather undermined by Lord Hutton who, referring to Alastair Campbell's diary entries, said the use of the word merely meant he wanted to "rebut" Andrew Gilligan. With respect, M'Lud, most of us read into that word a desire on Campbell's part to utterly destroy Gilligan's career.

My earliest mentor in this job reckoned that swearing indicated a vocabulary too poverty-stricken to turn a more witty phrase. That's borne out by author Frederick Forsyth saying he had enough money "to tell a consortium of quite insufferable people to shove a $m contract where it would cause maximum discomfort". Would I have remembered that across 30 years if he'd been terse and four-lettered?

Newcastle police last week announced £100 fines for those heard using obscene language in public, but they've missed the real culprits who first put it into public use - the (then Manchester) Guardian and Kenneth Tynan.

* On the wheelchair case, Ryanair is to appeal, claiming airports other than those run by the British Airports Authority supply wheelchairs free, and that it is not the carrier's duty to do so. As Ryanair had had to pay £18 to a company at the airport for the wheelchair, why is it OK for that company to charge for a service to a wheelchair user - or am I missing some subtle point of law here?