by Kim Newman
‘can’t even beat as it sweeps as it cleans’ – The UK slogan for Hoover vacuum cleaners in the 1970s was ‘It beats as it sweeps as it cleans’.
Michelin Man – Cheery advertising mascot of the tyre company, he consists of white bloated tyres.
Schleswig-Holstein Question – Bane of any schoolboy studying O-level European history in 1975. It’s a key plot point in George MacDonald Fraser’s novel Royal Flash.
muggins – A sap, a patsy.
Egyptian Avenue
Kingstead Cemetery – Among the more famous dead people interred there is Lucy Westenra, Count Dracula’s first British victim.
Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb – A 1964 Hammer film. Not one of their best.
Derek Leech – See ‘The Original Dr Shade’, ‘SQPR’, ‘Organ Donors’, The Quorum, Life’s Lottery, ‘Seven Stars’, Where the Bodies Are Buried, ‘Going to Series’, ‘Another Fish Story’, etc.
Daily Comet – The Daily Comet, a tabloid owned by media baron Derek Leech.
Bay City Rollers – 1970s boy band, very popular with the sisters of boys who hated them.
BOAC – British Overseas Airways Corporation. Merged with British European Airways in 1974 to form British Airways.
Drache – The architect. See ‘Organ Donors’, ‘Going to Series’, ‘Another Fish Story’.
Soho Golem
John Galsworthy (1867–1933) – Author, of course, of The Forsyte Saga.
skiffle – Form of music popular (briefly) in the late 1950s, typified by the use of a washboard base and the mangling of nineteenth-century folk songs. Stuart Sutcliffe once demeaningly referred to the Beatles as ‘John Lennon’s skiffle group’.
Carnabetian – Coinage by Ray Davies of The Kinks, in ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion’.
A to Z – The London A–Z – a once-indispensable book of street-maps.
fuzz – Police.
tart – Girl of easy virtue, prostitute.
the filth – Police.
Black Marias – Police van, used for taking suspects into custody.
susses – Suspects. Verb – to suss, to suspect or find out.
grasses – Police informants.
toerag – Person of inferior morals and status.
hawkshaw – Synonym for detective, originating in a character in the nineteenth-century melodrama The Ticket-of-Leave Man.
crim – Criminal.
nabbed – Arrested.
Dock Green – George Dixon. Introduced in the film The Blue Lamp (1950), PC George Dixon, played by Jack Warner, was the archetypal friendly British bobby. Though shot dead by wideboy Dirk Bogarde in the film, the character was revived for the TV series Dixon of Dock Green (1955–1976) – which in UK TV terms holds the status of being equivalent to both Dragnet and The Andy Griffith Show, as police procedural and cosy vision of paternalistic law enforcement. The American urban legend of cops beating a suspect while whistling the theme to The Andy Griffith Show has a British equivalent involving the memorable Dixon of Dock Green theme. A memorable post-modern take on the character is the TV play The Black and Blue Lamp (1988).
giving Fred the shout – Keeping Fred abreast of the situation.
Glastonbury Tor – Site of alleged psychic importance in Somerset – a steep hill on which sits a medieval tower.
papaloi – Voodoo priest.
tetrodotoxin – Drug used to simulate death, essential in the recipe for enslaving folks as zombies.
trimmer – Lazy, morally lax type.
rozzer – Police.
guv’nor – Governor, superior.
given Richard a bell – Called Richard on the telephone.
lumme – Ancient cockney expletive – derived from ‘God loves me’.
goin’ spare – In a state of desperation.
blower – Telephone.
cuppa – A cup of tea, universal British salve.
Typhoo – A brand of tea.
two pound – Expensive now, exorbitant then.
‘I’m Backing Britain’ – A patriotic-but-trendy campaign (‘Buy British’) of the late 1960s – it revived the use of the Union Jack in design, but didn’t exactly reverse the long-term decline of the UK manufacturing industry.
Jungle Jillian – Heroine of the serial Perils of Jungle Jillian (1938), played by Olympic swimmer Janey Wilde. See ‘The Big Fish’.
glamour films – Silent, one-reel 8mm short subjects sold mostly through mail-order, essentially depicting strip-tease acts. The most prolific director of the genre was Harrison Marks, and his biggest star Pamela Green – who can be seen as the model in Peeping Tom (1960).
News of the World – Sunday tabloid, traditionally packed with crime and scandal stories. Bought up and closed down by Rupert Murdoch.
on the game – The practice of prostitution.
cove – Man, fellow, bloke, chap, guy.
mince pies – Rhyming slang: mince pies = eyes.
Crombie jacket – The sort of jacket you’d wear in 197— if you didn’t want to be labelled a poof.
Bristols – breasts. Rhyming slang: Bristol City = titty. Bristol City is a football club.
chancer – Spiv, wideboy, petty grifter, opportunistic crook.
flash git – Showy bastard. ‘Git’ is from ‘illegitimate’.
with-it – Stylish, up to the minute, in the know.
Smithfield’s – London’s premier meat-market.
the firm – Organised crime.
diamond – Outstanding.
St Trinian’s – A notorious girls’ school, first seen in cartoons by Ronald Searle, then a series of films starting with The Belles of St Trinian’s (1954).
my patch – Territory, fiefdom.
the full frighteners – A menacing stare.
toodle-oo – Good-bye.
Carry On Cleo (1964) – The one with Amanda Barrie as Cleopatra.
Donovan hat – Large floppy headgear, popularised by the singer Donovan but mostly worn by women.
sta-presses – Smart jeans.
sarnie – Sandwich.
nosh – Food.
herbert – Fellow.
Shane jacket – Hideously out of fashion after Jon Voigt threw his away at the end of Midnight Cowboy (1969).
demobbed – Demobilised, just out of the armed forces.
knockin’ shops – Brothels.
cigarette cards – UK equivalent of bubble-gum cards.
Teddy boy – A late-1950s youth phenomenon – roughs and layabouts who liked rock ’n’ roll music but dressed in modified Edwardian gear – frock coats, tight trousers, greasy quiffs.
Variety Club of Great Britain – Showbusiness charity organisation which raises funds for underprivileged and disabled children (now called Variety, the Children’s Charity).
quota quickies – Inexpensive British B-feature films, often with a faded American star, made to take advantage of a law that insisted a certain quota of films shown in British cinemas be British-made.
Diana Dors – Britain’s biggest film star of the 1950s, famous for blond bombshell roles and probably more for her personality than any of her actual credits. The prison movie Yield to the Night (1956) was an unusually dramatic role for Dors, who was most often found in fluff like An Alligator Named Daisy (1955) or London noirs like Passport to Shame (1958). In later life and several dress sizes larger, she was a regular in 1970s horror and sex films – Nothing But the Night (1973), Theatre of Blood (1973), Keep It Up Downstairs (1976).
Shirley Anne Field – Star of Beat Girl (1960), The Damned (1962) and other British cult films.
Lew Grade – British cinema and TV tycoon, scuppered his empire by making Raise the Titanic (1980).
Royal Film Performance – An annual showbiz institution, whereby the Royal Family are shown a specially-selected-as-inoffensive film.
tom – Prostitute.
Gilbert O’Sullivan – Mysteriously popular 1970s crooner. Wore bigger Donovan hats than Donovan.
ponces – Men who live off
the immoral earnings of women, pimps.
Special Patrol Group – More familiarly ‘the SPG’, controversial police unit of the 1970s – often accused of racism, excessive force and the like.
gob – Mouth.
Mrs Grundy – An unseen character in Thomas Morton’s Speed the Plough (1798), who epitomises the prim, disapproving neighbour. ‘What will Mrs Grundy say?’ was a mocking catch-phrase for decades, until Dame Grundy simply entered the language as a by-word for priggishness.
Dr Bowdler – In 1818, Thomas Bowdler published The Family Shakspeare, in which all material construed as offensive was omitted (e.g. the entire character of Doll Tearsheet from Henry IV, Part II); these cut texts were the default for fifty years. He lent his name to the verb ‘to bowdlerise’, meaning to dilute by censorship.
Kia-Ora – Brand of alleged orange-derived juice, endemic to cinema refreshment stalls in the UK.
plates – Rhyming slang: plates of meat = feet.
Screen International – UK film trade paper, along the lines of Variety. Now online as Screen Daily. I occasionally review for it.
pinta – Pint of milk. A 1960s slogan ran ‘drinka pinta milka day’.
fladge – Flagellation.
s.b.g. – Stunningly beautiful girl.
clocked – Took notice of.
a right cow – Not a very nice woman.
Prince Prospero – The character played by Vincent Price in Roger Corman’s 1964 film of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Masque of the Red Death’.
Clean Air Act – The law, passed in 1956, that regulated coal-burning fires in London and put an end for ever to the famous pea-soup fog. Whenever you see a London fog in an American film set after 1956, it’s a mistake.
The Serial Murders
BBC Two – At the time of this story, British television had only three channels. The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) channels BBC One and BBC Two were, and remain, free of commercial interruption, supported by the TV licence fee; BBC One is fairly populist, while BBC Two purportedly caters to more select interests. The third channel was ITV (Independent Television), not so much a network as a loose grid of franchise-holding local broadcasters (e.g. Thames Television in the South East, Westward in the South West) who carried a great deal of programming in common but with many regional variations. ITV shows might air on different days of the week and in different timeslots in diverse parts of the country. This author remembers manually retuning the family set to catch the blurry, distant signal of HTV Wales to watch Hammer films not being shown in our area.
Autons – Lesser-known alien villains from Doctor Who, introduced in ‘Spearhead From Space’ (1970). They returned in ‘Terror of the Autons’ (1971) and, after a long absence, ‘Rose’ (2005). Plastic entities resembling shop-window mannequins.
Ealing – A London borough (postcodes W5 and W13). Associated with the now-defunct Ealing Studios, where many famous post-war British films – including the police drama The Blue Lamp (1950) – were shot. The police station is at 67–69 Uxbridge Road.
Holloway – A women’s prison, located in North London.
bluebottle – Slang – police constable. The expression comes from the distinctive British police helmet, which also gives rise to ruder synonyms.
‘get yer hair cut’ – from 1945 onwards, the moaning battle cry of middle-aged, balding or short-back-and-sides conservatives at the sight of a man or especially youth with long or even longish hair. It has fallen into disuse since kids began to opt for shaven heads or elaborate but cropped hairstyles, but isolated incidences persist. As the generations who endured mandatory military haircuts die off, the shout – which tends to betoken a lack of basic manners on the part of the shouter rather than the usually unassuming shouted-at – will fade away completely.
briefs – Slang – lawyers.
Old Bailey – London’s Central Criminal Court.
Broadmoor – Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane – now Broadmoor Hospital – in Berkshire. The largest secure psychiatric facility in the United Kingdom. Past and present inmates include Daniel M’Naghten, would-be assassin of Prime Minister Robert Peel, Richard Dadd, the artist, June and Jennifer Gibbons, ‘the Silent Twins’, and Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper.
DS – Detective Sergeant.
primary school – Grade school.
Tube – London Underground Railway, i.e. subway or metro.
that documentary about the Queen eating cornflakes – The Royal Family, telecast on BBC One on June 21, 1969. Sixty-eight per cent of the British population watched the (excruciatingly dull) two-hour programme. There was much comment about the hitherto-unrevealed details of the Windsors’ dietary habits.
Max Bygraves – Born 1922, popular crooner and comedian, top-liner of a string of ITV programmes, including Singalongamax and the quiz show Family Fortunes. Specialised in sentimental novelty songs, like ‘You Need Hands’ and ‘Gilly, Gilly, Ossenfeffer, Katzenellen Bogen by the Sea’. Had UK hits with covers of ‘Mister Sandman’, ‘The Ballad of Davy Crockett’ and that monologue ‘Deck of Cards’.
Albertine disparue – The sixth volume of Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu.
MI5 – The branch of the British Secret Service concerned with internal security, i.e. counter-intelligence, counter-terrorism.
Goodwood – A British race-course.
Grauniad – The Guardian, the UK newspaper, often chided for its misprints. The nickname comes from the satirical periodical Private Eye.
News of the Screws – Popular nickname for the News of the World.
slap – Make-up.
Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band – Founded 1881, they had a chart success in 1977, holding the UK number two spot (Paul McCartney kept them from number one) with ‘The Floral Dance’.
the Pink Floyd – Well-spoken people, like Richard Jeperson and Michael Moorcock, always use the definite article.
Shrewsbury – A women’s college at Oxford University. Among Lady Damaris’s contemporaries was the crime writer Harriet Vane.
Television Monograph – Published by the British Film Institute.
Crossroads – ITV soap opera, set in a motel outside Birmingham (and about as exciting as that sounds). It ran from 1964 to 1988, and was briefly revived as an afternoon show in the early 2000s.
Coronation Street – The UK’s longest-running TV soap (The Archers, on the radio, has been going longer), first broadcast in 1960, set in the fictional Weatherfield, which seems a lot like the real Salford. The present author has never watched a single episode. Just minutes after finishing the story, I saw a story (‘CORRIE CALL IN GHOST BUSTER’) in the tabloid Daily Star about an alleged haunting on the set of the show which parallels the events of ‘The Serial Murders’. Spooky.
ylang-ylang – Perfume derived from the flower of the cananga (or custard-apple) tree.
National Front – A far-right (oh, all right, fascist) British political party; in the 1970s, openly racist and noisy with it.
lose their deposit – To stand in a parliamentary election, a candidate must post a sum of money which is forfeit if they poll less than an eighth of the popular vote. From 1918 to 1985, the deposit was £150; now, it’s £500. Though fringe parties of the right, left and satirical (e.g. The Monster Raving Loony Party) traditionally lose their deposits and aren’t fussed about it, any candidate of a major party who suffers this fate is greatly humiliated.
Guy Fawkes Night – 5 November, aka Bonfire Night. So named for a Catholic plotter who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament and is still burned in effigy (‘the guy’) on bonfires. Associated with fireworks displays. In Lewes, Sussex, they symbolically burn the Pope.
Eugène Sue – Author (1804–1857) of Les Mystères de Paris (The Mysteries of Paris, 1842–1843) and Le Juif errant (The Wandering Jew, 1845).
Whistler forced George Du Maurier to rewrite Trilby to take out some digs at him – The artist Joseph Whistler objected to a caricature of him as ‘Joe Sibley’ i
n the serial version of Du Maurier’s novel – which he rewrote for book publication to omit the offending material. The original version has been restored in modern editions.
Clive James – Australian-born cultural commentator, long resident in Britain. He was the TV critic for the Observer from 1972 to 1982; his columns are collected in Visions Before Midnight and The Crystal Bucket.
rag trade – Garment industry.
Haslemere – Mid-sized town in Surrey.
Home Counties – The counties which border London: definitively Surrey, Kent, Middlesex, Essex; arguably, Berkshire, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. The stereotypical haunt of the upper-middle classes. Conservative candidates rarely lose their deposits in Home Counties elections.
Home Service – One of three BBC radio channels – the others being the Light Programme and the Third Programme – from 1939 to 1970; it was replaced by Radio 4, which is still on the air.
Celia Johnson – Star of Brief Encounter (1945), famous for her clipped, ‘cut-glass’ English accent.
Dick Barton, Special Agent – BBC radio adventure serial on the Light Programme, from 1946 to 1951. At the height of its popularity, fifteen million listeners followed the adventures of ex-commando Dick and his pals Jock (a Scotsman) and Snowy (a cockney) as they defied foreign baddies. There were three Dick Barton films in the early 1950s.
Journey into Space – A series of BBC radio science fiction serials, broadcast on the Light Programme, beginning with ‘Operation Luna’ in 1953.
reptiles – Derogatory slang, yellow press reporters or paparazzi. The term is often used by people in the PR business.
ginormous – Large.
Financial Times – UK equivalent of the Wall Street Journal. Published on pink paper.
Cluedo – UK trade-name for the board-game known in the US as Clue.
Fortnum’s – Posh department store. Formally, Fortnum and Mason’s.
Round the Horne – BBC radio comedy programme, hosted by Kenneth Horne. The performers Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick played recurring characters, Julian and Sandy, who popularised camp patois (‘polari’) at a time when male homosexuality was technically a criminal offence. ‘How bona to vada your eek,’ means ‘How nice to see your face.’mangle-worzel – White turnip. The vegetable, hence the accent, is associated with the West Country (Somerset, Devon, Dorset, Cornwall).
