Cult cartoonists Modern Toss team up with University of Sheffield linguists to record how Britain really swears with the UK’s first-ever swear census
The map celebrates regional language and insults: Blert (Liverpool), Cheb (Sunderland), Dinlo (Portsmouth), Grockle (southwest)
Having an exhibition yeah? — 21 Years of Modern Toss
Drawing Room, Bermondsey, London SE1 5WS
14 August – 6 September 2026
Tickets on sale now
“Modern Toss is a contemporary cartoon classic.” – The Guardian
Cult cartoonists Modern Toss are set to unveil a working prototype of the first ever UK Swear Map, an interactive artwork and growing archive of regional swearing slang, at the London edition of their 21st anniversary exhibition.
The map is a 12-button mini tour of British swearing, letting visitors hear multiple regional voices at the push of a button, all listened to through a telephone receiver that hangs off the coast of Norfolk. It draws on a swear census created with linguists at the University of Sheffield: Blert in Liverpool, Cheb in Sunderland, Ballix in Belfast and more.
As regional dialects fade, and as Sheffield’s research shows AI often struggles with regional accents and non-standard English, the Swear Map documents English as it is actually spoken. This first prototype is the beginning of an ever-growing archive, and the public are invited to add their own words and voices at tinyurl.com/swearmap.
Dr Chris Montgomery of the University of Sheffield said: “Swearing is a fundamental part of how everybody expresses emotion, identity, humour and social connection, yet it’s so often excluded from formal records of language. At a time when some regional dialects might be disappearing, we wanted to document English as it’s truly lived and spoken across the UK.”
Jon Link of Modern Toss said: “We’ve spent years turning filthy data into charts and daft interactive art, and this let us do it with proper academic rigour, yeah? Press a button, hear the country swearing back at you. It’s a work in progress, so come and be part of it.”
The wider exhibition brings together more than 100 works, including the F***yeux Tapestry, a 103-metre cartoon reimagining of the Bayeux Tapestry originally made with hundreds of participants at Somerset House, returning to London as the real thing goes on show at the British Museum. Also on display: token-operated swearing machines, big stone heads, large-scale paintings, a wind-powered finger mill sculpture, a new 5m-wide ceiling mobile hung with four life-size flies, and a looped screening of 100 best cartoons and animation from the Modern Toss collection. Each ticket includes tokens for the interactive machines, including the world-famous Periodic Table of Swearing.
Co-founder Jon Link will also host live portrait sessions in the infamous Modern Toss Portrait Booth, sketching sitters from inside a custom-built photo booth and posting each drawing out through the wall.
Tickets available now at drawingroom.org.uk
“Modern Toss hopes to set a record for “the longest single panel cartoon with the word ‘fuck’ in it” – Jonathan Jones, The Guardian on the F***yeux Tapestry
See the UK Swear Map and the F***yeux Tapestry at Modern Toss’ 21st anniversary exhibition Having an exhibition yeah? at Drawing Room, London from 14 August – 6 September 2026. Tickets are available now.
www.moderntoss.com | @moderntoss
www.drawingroom.org.uk | @drawingroomlondon
Modern Toss
Modern Toss is the work of a couple of cack-handed troublemakers. It began life in 2002 as some angry drawings in a sketchbook, knocked out on the daily commute.
Two decades and a few thousand drawings later, it’s spiralled into a full-scale cult cartoon movement spanning greetings cards, books, animation, public sculpture and exhibitions, most recently involving the British public in the UK Swear Map, an interactive archive of regional filth produced in collaboration with the University of Sheffield that somehow ended up on the BBC and in the New York Times. The latest show brings those same train-sketched drawings, now grown into prints, interactive pieces, animations and a whole exhibition’s worth of stuff, to Drawing Room.
Their work is prized by connoisseurs and collectors, with laugh-out-loud prints and artwork decorating toilet walls throughout the country. They made two TV series for Channel 4 along with an impressive stack of other short animations for the telly, in particular Business Mouse, a series of daft as arseholes run-ins with a foul-mouthed entrepreneurial cockney mouse, proved a massive hit. Over the years Modern Toss have self published a whole rack of sharp and hilarious books, including the ever popular Work series. In 2014 a comprehensive appraisal of their groundbreaking work to date ‘A Decade in the Shithouse’ book, weighing in at nearly 5lbs, was hailed as ‘a contemporary cartoon classic’ by someone at The Guardian. In 2024 the Periodic Table of Swearing was performed as a seven-minute baroque masterpiece by the Jam Tarts, a 60-piece choir, at Brighton Dome. More recently the House of Toss has branched into premium objects, including a hand-painted Dog Shit Bag Bauble for the contemporary Christmas tree and a 1:1 scale Housefly model kit. Their work has featured regularly in Private Eye, New World Magazine, The Idler, The Guardian, New Scientist and Esquire and bursts out occasionally in a crop of other magazines and newspapers.
