Let's call the whole thing orf

I get quite a few advanced copies of books. There's one on my desk just now called The No Asshole Rule by Robert Sutton, a professor of management science and engineering at Stanford University in the US.

The book makes some good points, asking why we should put up with people at work who make our lives a misery. We all know who they are. Sutton discusses alternative descriptions such as: "bullies, creeps, jerks, weasels, tormentors, tyrants, serial slammers, despots or unconstrained egomaniacs" but argues that asshole "best captures the fear and loathing I have for these nasty people."

"If you are truly tired of living in Jerk City," he writes, "If you don't want every day to be a walk down Asshole Avenue, well it's your job to build a civilized workplace.

I agree with his sentiments entirely but I have two problems with asshole. The first concerns the word itself. I think that I first encountered the American spelling of ass, meaning posterior, bottom, rear end (we really don't have a good word for it do we) when reading Norman Mailer's The Naked and The Dead many years ago. I remember hesitating briefly, wondering why a donkey should have entered the story, but it was clear that Mailer was referring to something I had hitherto known as an arse.

It just didn't work for me. Not only was the pronunciation all wrong, the word ass, to my mind, represented beach rides at the seaside or manger scenes at Christmas. It did not create the initial image of a Rokeby Venus or the kind of plump cheeks you see in a Rubens. Without this image it was difficult to translate the word in to its colourful pejorative meaning.

The No Arsehole Rule would be fine. It works wonderfully. Offices are full of arseholes and if you read the book you find yourself wondering if you might be one of them. Yes, there is no escaping the arsehole test and I'm sure, if we're honest, most of us might have qualified at some time, if only briefly. So there is much rich observation to discuss here.

Which brings me to my second problem - the Financial Times where I would most likely write about this book. I know that the newspaper is no longer quite so prudish as it was. But I know too how sub editors wince by proxy from the editor's office at anything that is challenging the newspaper's traditional (that is: old fashioned) sense of taste.

It doesn't need the editor to make this point: if it makes readers feel uncomfortable we don't use it. Ah but! There has to be an "Ah but!" here. Supposing the majority of readers are comfortable with arsehole, as I am? Should we pander to a minority?

Unfortunately, as I have already explained, the debate is complicated by the different spellings and pronunciations on either side of the Atlantic. Modern film usage has made asshole slightly more tolerable in the UK but it still grates to hear American slang entering the Queen's English.

I should add that I'm sure Her Majesty would never stoop to calling anyone an asshole. In fact Oxford English demands a long "A". Just as "off" becomes "orf", ass must be pronounced arse. In fact the Queen would have no problem calling anyone a "silly ass" and her pronunciation would be the same whatever her true intention.

The upshot is that I don't know what to do about it. It's a quandry. As Fred Astaire once said, using Ira and George Gershwin's immortal lines: "You like tomato, I like to-may-to, let's call the whole thing off." Or should that be orf?