"Irish lawmaker unloads F-bomb in parliament," read yesterday's headline on the Huffington Post, the liberal US news website that is visited by 22 million people a month.

Paul Gogarty has gone global. The Dublin West Green Party TD has already become a YouTube hit following his "F**k you, Deputy Stagg" outburst in the Dáil on Friday afternoon. But Gogarty is by no means the first politician to use expletives. In fact, he joins a long line of perpetrators.

As recently as September, the Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd found himself at the centre of a political storm when he refused to apologise for using the F-word in a tirade of foul language during a heated meeting with members of the Australian Labour party in Canberra.

Rudd's recent comments were made behind closed doors, but he does have form as he used the word "shit-storm" on Australia's Sunday Night TV show last March.

Australian politics has been witness to many expletives in the past, as Labour senator Gareth Evans famously became the first Australian senator to say "f**k" in the Senate, when he interjected "For f**k's sake" during a speech by Senator Robert Hill in 1990.

Australian politics has a history of taking political mudslinging to a new level. In the 1970s, the Australian Democrats political party used the slogan "keep the bastards honest", a reference to the two main parties, for a number of years in its electioneering material.

Former prime minister Paul Keating likened one of his successors John Howard to a "mandy maggot" and described him as "brain-­damaged".

Closer to home, former taoiseach Charlie Haughey will long be remembered for his infamous 1984 Hot Press interview where, referring to members of his own party, he said he wanted to push "a load of f*****s over a cliff" after cutting their throats.

Albert Reynolds landed himself in trouble for use of a less crude term when asked if it was true that he did not speak to Des O'Malley outside of the cabinet. He said: "I mean that, for the record, It's crap, total crap."

In 2001, then Labour leader Ruairí Quinn raised eyebrows with his "get the bastards out" rallying cry to the party faithful.

A lot of you-know-what hit the fan when a clearly exasperated John Bruton told a startled reporter that he had enough of answering questions about the "f***ing peace process".

Bruton's predecessor as leader of Fine Gael, Alan Dukes, caused a stir when he referred to a meeting with a bishop: "Only I had promised Garret that all I was going to do was sit and listen, I'd have been dug out of the bastard."

In 2001, the premier of the Canadian province of Ontario called a member of the opposition an "asshole" and in 2000 then US president George W Bush described a New York Times journalist as a "major league asshole".

The expletives of Gogarty, Bruton, Bush, Evans, and Rudd all pale into insignificance when compared to a shocking insult hurled at a female MP on the small Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.

The woman had to endure the words "Al donn to fes pitin. To abitie done mem" – which means "go and get screwed, you tart. You enjoy that" – being shouted at her.

Political insults are not a new phenomenon, either. When John Wilkes, the radical troublemaker and future lord mayor of London was warned by Lord Sandwich, a pillar of the 18th-century establishment, that he would "die of the pox or on the gallows," he replied: "That depends, my lord, on whether I first embrace your mistress or your principles."

More recently, Taoiseach Brian Cowen apologised after the Dáil microphones picked him up saying to Tánaiste Mary Coughlan: "We need to get a handle on this, will you ring those f*****s", in May 2008.

That seems like a storm in teacup when you, like thousands of others, look at Gogarty's F-bomb on YouTube.