by Kim Newman
Mummerset – Another term for a non-specific West Country accent, like that used by Robert Newton as Long John Silver (or, more often, people impersonating Robert Newton as Long John Silver) and, indeed, many screen pirates.
chits – Invoices.
full English – Cooked breakfast.
Norton – British make of motorbike.
three-piece suite – A sofa and two armchairs, inevitable in the parlours of lower-middle-class or upper-working-class families with aspirations to gentility.
looney bin – Insane asylum, bughouse, nut-hatch.
sides – Theatrical term for an actor’s lines.
oiks – Low-class brutes.
Harold Steptoe – The long-suffering son, played by Harry H. Corbett, in the classic BBC TV sitcom Steptoe and Son (1962–75), which was Americanised as Sanford and Son.
Barclay’s Bank – High street bank, much boycotted in the 1970s for its ties with apartheid-era South Africa.
Bradford – Town in Yorkshire.
vest – Undershirt, not a waistcoat.
‘Penny for the Guy’ – The cry of children soliciting coins for showing off their stuffed effigies of Guy Fawkes in the build-up to Guy Fawkes Night.
Peter Wyngarde – A 1970s icon in the shows Department S and Jason King, playing a dandyish fashion-plate mystery novelist turned detective. He’s also in The Innocents as a ghost, Night of the Eagle, the ‘Touch of Brimstone’ episode of The Avengers and the remake of Flash Gordon.
Spotlight – The UK directory of actors.
War on Want – A charity campaign.
structuralists – Followers of a critical school, ascendant in Academe in the 1970s.
Frank Bough – UK TV sports commentator and news presenter, roughly equivalent to Howard Cosell in America.
we’re on a sticky wicket, up against the ropes, down to the last man, and facing a penalty in injury time – Bad situations in cricket, boxing, cricket and soccer.
keys-in-a-bowl parties – A 1970s thing. You had to be there. Or maybe best not.
Steenbeck – A flatbed film editing machine.
TV Times – ITV’s TV listings magazine.
goolies – Testicles.
the worst bits of James Herbert – Usually castration-anxiety fantasies with extra adjectives (cf. The Rats, The Fog). The word ‘nasty’, as applied to ‘video nasties’ in the 1980s, was devised to describe the brand of moist paperback horror of which Herbert was the pre-eminent 1970s practitioner, followed by the even more prolific Guy N. Smith (Night of the Crabs, The Sucking Pit).
Clarks tracker shoes – They had animal footprints on the soles, so you left tracks with them.
Triumph TR7 – Not the best car ever made in Great Britain.
titfer – Hat. Rhyming slang, tit fer tat = hat.
Dennis Potter – UK TV playwright – famous for, among others, Pennies From Heaven and The Singing Detective.
Alan Plater – UK TV writer, who debuted on the seminal cop series Z-Cars and has scripted many series and serials, like The Beiderbecke Affair, Flambards and A Very British Coup.
Farrah hair – A ’do popularised by Farrah Fawcett.
Dad’s Army – Classic BBC sitcom set in World War Two, about the Home Guard.
shove ha’penny – A pub game, which involves competitively shoving small coins across a board.
Cold Snap
dustbin – As h-can.
Jean-Claude Killy – French ski champion.
Bernard Levin – Journalist, author and broadcaster – a very familiar TV pundit in the 1960s and 1970s.
Late Night Line-Up – A BBC TV show that ran on BBC Two from 1964 to 1972. Its original remit was to publicise other programmes on the then-new channel, but this expanded to cover many cultural, political and media topics.
Charles Shaar Murray – Journalist, who specialises in pop music. He was at IT between spells at Oz and the NME. He wrote the introduction to In Dreams, an original anthology I edited with Paul J. McAuley.
IT – The International Times, an ‘underground’ paper published from 1966.
Leo Dare, Isidore Persano, Colonel Zenf – Stories for which the world is not ready, but see ‘A Drug on the Market’ for Dare and ‘Sorcerer Conjurer Wizard Witch’ (The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club) for Persano and Zenf.
Derek Leech had popped up apparently out of nowhere in 1961 – In the first chapter of The Quorum, actually.
Brian Epstein – The Beatles’ manager.
Enoch Powell – Politician of the 1950s–1980s, who left the Conservatives to join the Ulster Unionists. A controversial figure (to put it mildly), he famously espoused anti-immigration and repatriation policies (as expressed in his racially inflammatory ‘rivers of blood’ speech). Arthur Wise’s novel Who Killed Enoch Powell? (1972) imagines his assassination.
Mary Millington – The leading British porn star of the 1970s. She appeared in films (Come Play With Me, The Playbirds), stag reels and many magazine and newspaper spreads. She claimed to have had a one-night stand with Harold Wilson, and committed suicide at the age of thirty-three in 1979.
Jimmy Saville – Disc jockey and TV personality, host of the long-running Jim’ll Fix It, and known in the 1970s for creepy road-safety adverts (‘clunk-click, every trup’) in which he smarmed over children who’d been horribly mangled in car accidents. Posthumously revealed to be a serial sexual abuser of monstrous proportions.
Wedgy Benn – Anthony Wedgwood Benn, Lord Stansgate – who gave up his title and spent decades trying to get the media to call him Tony Benn. A minister in the Wilson government of the 1960s, later a left-wing gadfly.
Billy Butlin – The founder of Butlins Holiday Camps.
Zenith the Albino – Anthony Zenith, dilettante master criminal, most active in the 1920s and 1930s, repeatedly clashing with the detective Sexton Blake. See Monsieur Zenith the Albino (1936) by Anthony Skene. Reported killed in the blitz, but we’ll take the word of a Dr Shade over hearsay…
Albert Steptoe – The ‘dirty old man’ played by Wilfrid Brambell in the BBC TV sitcom Steptoe and Son (1962–75).
my O-level results – Or CSEs. O levels and Certificates of Secondary Education were exams taken in the 1970s by UK schoolchildren at about sixteen.
Brain of Britain – A radio quiz programme. It’s still running.
Bertie Bassett – The mascot of the Bassett confectionery line, manufacturers of liquorice allsorts.
Gary Glitter – UK pop performer, prominent in the early 1970s ‘glam rock’ trend with hits like ‘Rock and Roll, Parts 1 and 2’ and ‘I’m the Leader of the Gang (I Am)’. He is one of several 1970s entertainment figures now best known for being convicted of child sexual abuse. In current rhyming slang, ‘the Gary’ means ‘rectum’ (Gary Glitter = shitter).
Worm War, Wizard War – See ‘Sorcerer Conjurer Wizard Witch’ (Secret Files of the Diogenes Club).
Duel of the Seven Stars – See ‘Seven Stars’ (Secret Files of the Diogenes Club).
Janet and John – The UK equivalent of Dick and Jane – much better brought-up, they wouldn’t dream of running after Spot but would walk politely after the dog.
the Great Edmondo – Robert Edmond Stone, see ‘Sorcerer Conjurer Wizard Witch’ (Secret Files of the Diogenes Club). Edmondo was the Conjurer.
Nigel and Joanne Karabatsos – See ‘Mother Hen’ (reprinted in The Quorum).
Kitten Kong – A well-remembered 1971 episode of the BBC TV series The Goodies features a giant cat which climbs the Post Office Tower.
The Man Who Got Off the Ghost Train
British Rail – The national railway service between the 1940s, when the UK’s private rail companies were amalgamated under public ownership, and 1997, when the dying John Major government broke up the network and sold it off again. People used to complain about British Rail – but anyone who’s tried to get from London to Manchester on one of Richard Branson’s Virgin trains now looks back on that era with a rosy glow of nostalgia tinged with
unforgiving resentment for the politicians who decided the railways should benefit stockholders rather than passengers.
bin-men – Garbage collectors.
fag-end – Literally, a cigarette butt; colloquially, the remainder of anything that’s been used up.
time-and-motion study – An efficiency survey.
funk – Panic.
ticked off – Irritated.
slam-door diesel – Type of train in use in the 1980s.
Benson & Hedges – Cigarette brand.
Bunty – Girls’ comic.
The Lady – Uppercrust magazine.
Patrick Mower – UK actor, a familiar face in film (The Devil Rides Out, Cry of the Banshee) and on TV (Callan, Target).
Tit-Bits – A bland gossip magazine.
Robot Archie – A comic strip character.
Lion – A British weekly comic. Besides Archie, it ran the adventures of master criminal ‘The Spider’.
Number Ten – No 10, Downing Street, the office and official residence of the Prime Minister.
LSE – London School of Economics.
Manchester Poly – Manchester Polytechnic.
RADA – Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
All Souls – A college at Oxford University.
the Old Vic – A London theatre.
Larry Parnes – Promoter of Tommy Steele, Billy Fury, etc.
Health & Efficiency – The official magazine of the British naturist movement.
short back and sides – A severe haircut.
angry young men – Writers like Kingsley Amis and John Osborne, who later got older but didn’t stop being angry.
Ronnie Scott’s – Jazz club in Soho.
passed the conch to Catriona – Let Catriona speak. The expression comes from William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.
Lady Lucinda Tregellis-d’Aulney – See ‘Clubland Heroes’ (Secret Files of the Diogenes Club).
the interregnum – The period between the execution of Charles I (1649) and the coronation of Charles II (1660).
a navvy – A ‘navigator’, one of the workmen who lay and maintain railway tracks.
Windmill Girl – One of the nude tableau performers at London’s Windmill Theatre.
Elsie and Doris Waters – Variety artistes, known for their act as ‘Gert and Daisy’.
Ribena – A diluted fruit drink.
Archie Andrews – Britain’s answer to Charlie McCarthy, a ventriloquist’s dummy popular on the radio with the long-running programme Educating Archie. Archie was worked by ventriloquist Peter Brough, who never chopped off his own fingers. Miss Kaye is probably thinking of Hugo, the nastier dummy operated by the tragic Maxwell Frere – whose personality disorder inspired numberless Twilight Zone episodes.
Aldermaston marches – CND protests, regularly held at Easter.
Borley Rectory – The most haunted house in Great Britain, allegedly.
cold spots – Patches of unnatural chill, often found in haunted places. Maybe not unconnected to the fact that haunted houses tend to be draughty.
a butchers – Rhyming slang: butcher’s hook = look.
rag week – Period when students pull hilarious pranks and dress up in silly costumes to raise money for charity. It’s stupid and irritating but, unlike equivalent American college traditions, doesn’t involve torturing other students and at least notionally benefits good causes.
Biro – Ballpoint pen, so named for the inventors, Messrs Biró.
five one-pound notes – For decades, the standard fine for pulling the communication cord on a British train without good reason was five pounds. Eventually, that seemed like a small price to pay for just seeing what would happen.
Gene Krupa – A virtuoso jazz drummer.
Naked as Nature Intended – A nudist-camp film, starring Pamela Green. Directed by Harrison Marks.
a funny – A joke.
primary school – Grade school.
Sabrina – A UK pin-up and television personality of the 1950s.
snoek – Snake mackerel, a staple food during wartime shortages (often rumoured to be whale meat).
gyppy tummy – Upset stomach.
striding to the crease – Going in to bat at cricket.
Burton’s – Menswear chain.
Escher space – Named after the artist M.C. Escher, who drew paradoxical pictures playing with perspective and gravity.
Swellhead
CI – Chief Inspector.
warrant card – British police ID.
Charles Beauregard – See Anno Dracula, The Bloody Red Baron, Dracula Cha Cha Cha, Secret Files of the Diogenes Club.
quango – Quasi non-governmental organisation – a publicly financed body, but (theoretically) independent of the government of the day.
wellies – Wellington boots.
Maltesers – UK confectionery – small spherical malt honeycombs coated with chocolate.
Patricia Cornwell – The US crime writer believes that the Victorian painter Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper, and has been known to buy and dissect his works in pursuit of ‘evidence’.
gin and it – A sweet Martini. The ‘it’ is red vermouth.
Duke – Duke University, home of the Rhine Research Center Institute for Parapsychology.
sweet shop – Candy store.
Coal Hill Secondary Modern – See Time and Relative.
Juliet Bravo – A UK TV series about a policewoman; the title refers to the heroine’s call-sign rather than her name, Jean Darblay.
Blackpool’s Golden Mile – A string of seafront amusement arcades, tourist attractions, casinos and the like in the Northern resort town. Dick Barton and Adam Adamant both saved it from diabolical schemes.
Ascot – Royal Ascot, a major horse-racing meet, prominent in the English social calendar. Eliza Doolittle causes a stir there in My Fair Lady.
John O’Groats – The Northernmost spot on the British mainland.
Fisherman’s Friend – A make of strong, semi-medicinal lozenge, created in Lancashire in 1865 and marketed to the men of the fishing fleet as a means of assuaging respiratory problems.
Angel Down, Sussex – See ‘Angel Down, Sussex’ (Secret Files of the Diogenes Club).
Seven Stars – See ‘Seven Stars’ (Secret Files of the Diogenes Club).
Henry Merrivale – Sir Henry Merrivale See The Plague Court Murders by Carter Dickson (John Dickson Carr), et seq.
Katharine Reed – See Anno Dracula, The Bloody Red Baron, Dracula Cha Cha Cha, Secret Files of the Diogenes Club, Angels of Music.
Catriona Kaye – See Jago, Secret Files of the Diogenes Club, The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School, An English Ghost Story.
Dion Fortune – Born Violet Firth (1891–1946), English magician and author (The Secrets of Dr Taverner, etc.).
Any Questions? – Long-running BBC Radio topical debate programme. The television version is called Question Time.
Wembley – The English national football stadium, also used for other sports and large concerts.
Jodrell Bank – An observatory, home to the UK’s vast array of radio telescopes.
bumfreezer jacket – A short jacket, obviously.
Flaming Nora! – An expletive of astonishment.
Cantab – A graduate of Cambridge University, abbr. for the pseudo-Latin term cantabrigiensis.
tuck shop – In-school sweet (candy) shop.
six of the best – Six strokes of the cane on the buttocks – traditionally, a significant corporal punishment.
Sergeant Arthur Grimshaw – See ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’ in Back in the USSA (with Eugene Byrne). See also Carry On Sergeant, with William Hartnell.
National Service – Mandatory spell of military service, introduced in the UK in 1939 and extended by a parliamentary act of 1949 (which did not apply in Northern Ireland) until 1960. Young men over the age of eighteen were required to spend two years in the armed forces – or the Forestry Commission if they made an especial fuss about not wanting to shoot pe
ople – and remain on the reserves list for a further five years. Never as fiercely resisted, for obvious reasons, as the American draft of the Vietnam War, National Service produced a trickle of grumbling books (Leslie Thomas’s The Virgin Soldiers) and plays (Arnold Wesker’s Chips With Everything) about the inequities of the system.
Bognor – Especially dull seaside town in Sussex. After King George V visited in 1929, the place took to calling itself ‘Bognor Regis’ – though it was never given formal permission to add the royal honorific. Reputedly, the King’s last words, upon being told he would soon recover enough to return to the town, were ‘Bugger Bognor!’ And no wonder.
‘Tears for Souvenirs’ – Truly horrible hit record. Don’t let anyone tell you the charts in the 1960s were exclusively full of great music – Ken Dodd, perhaps most familiar to non-UK viewers as Yorick in Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, was more successful in record sales in Britain than Jimi Hendrix.
Stone Tape – Expression coined by Nigel Kneale for the TV play The Stone Tape (1972), describing the theory that ‘ghosts’ are recordings that play back under certain circumstances.
meter maid – A uniformed traffic warden.
Pirelli calendar – Posh girlie calendar, sponsored by the tyre company.
Porton Down – The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, where the United Kingdom carries out its (defensive) biological and chemical weapons research.
Angry Brigade – A British libertarian communist guerrilla movement, responsible for a string of bombings between 1970 and 1972. They did a lot of property damage, but only slightly hurt one person.
SAS – Special Air Service. UK equivalent of Navy SEALs or Special Forces.
Common Agricultural Policy – Controversial (i.e. unjust and unworkable) EU system of farm subsidies, much beloved by French farmers.
cash machine – ATM.
Heath Robinson – William Heath Robinson (1872–1944), a British illustrator who specialised in elaborate, ramshackle machines. The American Rube Goldberg is an exact equivalent.
AFTERWORD
Here’s how these stories happened.
In the 1990s, Stephen Jones edited an anthology called Dark Detectives: Adventures of the Supernatural Sleuths, dedicated to the sub-category of weird tale in which detectives, in the traditions of Sherlock Holmes or Philip Marlowe, tackle cases which involve the supernatural or the strange. The book represented William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki the Ghost-Finder, Manly Wade Wellman’s John Thunstone, Clive Barker’s Harry D’Amour and Jay Russell’s Marty Burns. Also in the magnifying-glass-and-wooden-stake business are Algernon Blackwood’s John Silence, Anthony Boucher’s Fergus O’Breen, Bram Stoker’s (and Chris Roberson’s – but not Stephen Sommers’s) Van Helsing, The X-Files’ Mulder and Scully, Jeff Rice’s (and Dan Curtis’s, Richard Matheson’s, Darren McGavin’s and David Case’s) Carl Kolchak and a run of comic-book or -strip characters famous (Dr Strange, Batman in a certain mood), middling cult (the Phantom Stranger, Zatanna) or obscure (Cursitor Doom, anyone? Dr Thirteen?).
