Tyrone town top place for swearing

The worst was Redcar, the Yorkshire seaside resort previously famed for its racecourse and steelworks.

Scientists at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (Casa) at University College London investigated patterns of profanity by monitoring tweets sent from smartphones with geo-location switched on, from the week beginning 28 August.

The F-word was the most featured swear word in all of the tweets collected over the course of the week, although it only accounted for 2.16% of tweets, the study found.

Three Scottish regions – Clackmannanshire, East Ayrshire and Falkirk – follow Redcar on the “profanometer”.

Strabane was the only place in Northern Ireland in the Top 10.

Interestingly, researchers noted the balance of swearing was skewed towards the country rather than cities, despite the cliches about the two differing areas.

The Orkney Islands was found to be the area with the fewest swear words when measured as a proportion of the number of tweets, followed by the Shetland Islands and Oxford.

The nation’s politicians and civil servants also appeared to successfully avoid swearing on Twitter, with Westminster measured as the fourth-least profane followed by Kensington and Chelsea in fifth.

The second biggest spike of the week was measured around 5pm on Monday, when Twitter users complained about their work and commute.