the dailymash

Experts have called for early intervention after an online survey of more than 1000 parents found that 25% of UK infants could not construct a sentence using at least two swear words and involving an extreme sexual practice or explicit threat of violence.

Dr Margaret Gerving, the UK's first early swearing 'tzar', said: "Learning to call someone a bastarding cock-knocker is one of the most important skills a child can master in the 21st Century."

All the parents questioned said they looked at picture books with their children, pointing to the different characters and calling them 'arseholes' before dismissing the book as 'bollocks' and throwing it in the corner.

More than 90 percent said they also told their children appallingly foul-mouthed fairy stories, including The Princess Who Was a Stuck-Up Bitch, and taught them nursery rhymes that included words such as 'shunt', 'front' and 'stunt'.

More girls than boys (34% against 27%) said their first swear word before they reached nine months, but boys usually catch up by 18 months as they know more dirty words for sex organs.

There were no real class differences as to when children said their first swear word, though the survey found that children from affluent backgrounds were quicker to use polysyllabic terms involving sophisticated concepts such as 'chuffmuncher' and 'pisswizard'.

The most common first swear word is 'fuck', followed by 'shit', 'cock', 'bastard' and 'spunkbucket'. Experts say this is because children find 'fu' easier to pronounce than 'spu'.

Dr Gerving said there had been a decrease in early swearing since Richard Madeley stopped doing This Morning on ITV, adding: "This is often the time when mothers and babies watch televison together and Mr Madeley was ever so good at provoking the first use of the word 'prick'."