Fuhgeddaboutit

My wife, Diane, discovered that you can watch "The Sopranos" here. Being Italian-American and from northern New Jersey, this is the next best thing to home movies for her. I like the show, too.

But I noticed something when I watched it for the first time in India last night. Tony Soprano -- the godfather of the Soprano crime family for those of you who may not know the show -- kept saying "freaking" a lot. And his voice seemed to change subtly when he said it.

That's when it hit me: the unexpurgated version we were used to seeing in London used another word that begins with "f" -- a lot. Whenever Tony used that word, they dubbed over it with "freaking."

At another point, Tony called someone a "bloodsucker." Two guesses as to what he really said.

It could have been worse. I related this story to some Indian colleagues today. They told me that they used to bleep over Tony's f-words.