Something Rhymes with Purple - Leather-arse

Episode Date: January 7, 2020

Taxi!! This week we’re giving you a ride through the world of cabbie vernacular. We’re testing our Knowledge, taking you through the Oranges & Lemons right up to the Gasworks. But you better not be a Butter Boy taking advantage of this leather-arse who’s on a Churchill… A Somethin’ Else production Susie’s Trio: Beeking - to bask in the sun or the warmth of the fire Nurdle - the perfect swoosh of toothpaste on a toothpaste advert Dasypygal - having hairy buttocks If you’d like to get in touch with a question for Susie and Gyles for a future episode, email [e-mail]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Something else. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Hello, my name is Giles Brandreth and I'm sitting in the sitting room of my friend... Susie Dent. And we're here in Oxford with our lovely log fire crackling away in the background to talk about words. This is the first of the editions of Something Rhymes with Purple for 2020. 2020. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you. We had a lovely opening year last year.

More than a million people actually managed to download our show. Yes. Our conversation. We are. About words and language. Genuinely very grateful. I was really touched, actually, by some of the letters that we got. So thank you for those.

I got a letter from somebody for New Year saying, can you do something about the over-political correctness that is coming into our language? She sent me the example that she'd come across. Somebody was anxious about giving bad news and had sent a text along the lines of, are you in the right headspace to receive information that could possibly hurt you? Are you in the right headspace?

What space do we need to be in? Well, that's all going on now. The things that I'm hoping to avoid this year is reaching out. Yes. Can I reach out to you? Yes. Oh, we need to reinstate our word jail because we used to get some fantastic suggestions from listeners for what needs to be imprisoned forever. Never let out. Appropriate space. I'm putting in the word jail straight away if you don't mind.

Going forward. In they go. That's very good. Now, have you been getting around at Christmas? How have you been getting around? I have been getting around in my new Tesla. Wow. How's it going?

An electric car. Is the charging going well? Have you got your own charging point? It's a nightmare. I don't like to think what the electricity bill will be. It goes from nought to 60. The insurance has gone through the roof. What, the car goes from nought to 60?

In a matter of three seconds. If you put your foot down too hard, there's nothing on the dashboard. It's all like a computer. I've only been allowed to go in it once. This is the first new car that you've ever had? The first brand new car we have ever had. We've always had second-hand cars. We began with a sort of Ford Cortina

with a little go-faster stripe down one side. We've now got this Tesla. I'm so terrifying in it. On private land, it's all right. I bet you're terrifying in it. I am terrifying in it. I'm terrified of it. I stand in the forecourt.

I'm able to press a button and say, come to me. And it does open the garage door and comes out and sits there. No. But I've only, that's on private land. It's like a little robot dog. It's like a robot. Once you get out on the road, you have to manage it. I've not managed it well.

So it's not self-driving. It could be, but you're not allowed to yet on the roads in this country. Okay, thank goodness for that. So I've let my wife do all the driving. She drives beautifully. But it's silent. It's silent. Yeah. So I may be having to go by cab in future, which is why we are here today, because I want you to tell me all about the words associated with the world of cabbies. Yes. Well, I wrote a book a little while ago in which I interviewed various groups of people who were united by a profession or united by a

passion, a hobby, and the language that they spoke, the sort of individual, unique tribal language that they conversed in. And I have to say, my times in the back of black cabs in London were amongst my happiest. We all know that London cabbies are really chatty, quite voluble, know that London cabbies are really chatty, quite voluble, always quite strong-willed and strong-minded. And it was fantastic. And of course their profession, or at least their service, goes back to 1636 when Charles I, I think it was, launched the world's oldest taxi service. And he granted permission for 50 Hackney carriages to trade on the streets of London. Ever wondered why they're called Hackney carriages? I was about to say, why are they called hackney carriages to trade on the streets of London. Ever wondered why they're called hackney carriages? I was about to say, why are they called hackney carriages? Well, because

300 years before that time, the grassland of Hackney Marshes in London, which is northeast, isn't it, of the city, became renowned for the horses that were bred there. And they were riding horses as opposed to destrier, which were horses used for war or sort of working horses, if you like. They were hackney horses made available for hire. They pulled hackney carriages around London and became so commonplace that we now talk about journalistic hacks as well, because they are everywhere and repeat the same thing. So these were hardworking, quite jaded, jade in that sense, also term term for worn out horse. They got the name from Hackney Marshland and they gave black cabs the name Hackney Carriages.

That's amazing. So the Hackney cab owes its name to Hackney Marshes. The hack, the journalist, it's so commonplace. That's the same origin. Yeah. Wonderful. Yeah. And cab comes from where?

Cabs comes from cabriolet. So that again was a horse drawing. Sounds like a chocolate drink. Oh, I'll have from cabriolet. So that again was a horse-drawn... Sounds like a chocolate drink. Oh, I'll have a cabriolet, please. Yes, that again was a horse-drawn carriage. So many, often on Countdown, actually, we get a lot of words for carriages. We have a fiacre, we have a charrette, we have...

These are all French words, aren't they? A lot of them are. Limousine, of course, goes back to limousin. A chauffeur was quite interesting. A chauffeur was originally the engineer or sort of driver who would stoke the fires of the sort of steam carriages, if you like. So that kind of originally... Chauffeur, as in heating up.

The French word heating up. A stoker. The stoker on a train became the chauffeur in a car. Yeah. The person who heats up the car. Driving the limousines. Yes. Driving the limousines.

The fiacre The Fiacre. Fiacre is, I can't actually remember the distinctions between all of them. But there are different kinds of carriages. And there were handsome cabs in London, weren't there? Two-wheeled, four-wheeled, well, not two-wheeled, sorry. Two horses, four horses. Troika, of course, from Russian Three.

And there were two wheels and four wheels. There were little carts with two wheels and there were four wheels. Sherlock Holmes is friendlessly saying, I'm going to get a four-wheeler. Handsome. He had a handsome cab, didn't he? Well, get me a handsome. Handsome being a person who in early Victorian times lent his name to a certain type of cab.

Yeah. H-A-N-S-O-M. Coach came from a place in Hungary, Koch. So coaches. The coach. Yeah, the coaches are really quite exotic. Coach comes from a place. What's the place called?

Koch is K-O-S-Z, I think. Koch. How wonderful. So the limousine comes from limous, and the coach comes from Koch. It comes from limousin. Limousin. Limousin. The limousine comes from limousin, and the coach comes from Koch.

Exactly. Excellent. Exactly. But I had such a good time talking to the cabbies, as I say, because not only do they have a fantastic lexicon, but also there are more and more now, I mean, still very low percentage, but of female cabbies and their experiences were interesting as well. One said to me, we keep ourselves to ourselves because many of the older

drivers don't want to admit that we can do it. But she was particularly brilliant on cabology, as it's called, so cabby speak, which is wonderful. And of course, London, I mean, there's a big discussion in our capital city as to whether private hire firms can have a license, et cetera. But black cabbies have held their own for such a long time. And should we go into some of their language? It's wonderful. Well, first of all, I should just say, a lot of people will have heard of the knowledge, which is the test that London cabbies have to pass.

And it's extraordinary and extraordinarily detailed. You know, they have to learn the geography of the capital off by heart. It was introduced, I think, in 1851 or at least. It was complaints from visitors to the Great Exhibition who said, our cabbies do not know the way of course no sat navs in those days and it was a victorian police commissioner who then said the knowledge capital t capital t had to be learned first but what's really interesting

is there was a study um that showed that the part of our brain responsible for um spatial awareness and navigation the hippocampus, was much greater, much bigger in London cabbies than in the general population. And they think it's because of the knowledge. Grow your hippocampus and the knowledge. Well, learning new things is good for the memory and the mind, isn't it? Fantastic. And warding off dementia and all sorts of things. Shall we talk about some of that? I want you to. Okay. Well, just interrupt me if you have any stories for me. I'll give you a tip. Do people still give tips to cabbies? They do. Yes, they do on the card now. It's all done by machine. It's quite interesting because a cabbie explained to

me that tips had gone out a bit. Younger people don't, older people, people in my generation expect to give tips. Yeah. Younger people didn't. But now people are paying by card. It gives you the option of 5%, 10%, 15%. So in fact, though they have to pay a percentage for using the card. So it counts. But anyway, it is a- Do you know where tip comes from, by the way?

It's not to ensure promptness, is it? It's not. No, that's a backronym, as they call it. It is related to a tip or a tap on the shoulder. And the first tips were actually information that was passed by one criminal to another. Yeah, well, my father used to do that. He thought that was quite funny, saying to the cab driver,

can I give you a tip? And the cab driver said, yes, please. And he said, well, I recommend red rum at the 310 from Exeter. No, I bet they loved that. Yeah, they did. Okay, well, the sherbet is a cab, simply. That's rhyming slang based on, do you remember sherbet dabs? I do, of course.

Oh, the sweet sherbet dabs. I had one the other day. They don't work any longer. They're too sweet. I loved it. Licorice into the yellow. Oh, it was fantastic. Absolutely.

Okay, the hickory, dickory dock, the meter. So that's rhyming slang for clock. So what's the amount on The hickory, dickory dock, the meter. So that's rhyming slang for clock. So what's the amount on the hickory? If you have a binder, if you're a cabbie, you have a really long wait at the rank. Why is it called a binder? We just don't know. I guess it just.

It's a bind. It's a real bind. Yeah. It's a way to your time. A butter boy is a novice cabbie. One who is but a boy. So not a newbie, but a butter boy. He's a butter boy uh is a novice cabbie one who is but a boy so not a newbie but a butter boy he's a butter boy um but a butterfly on the other hand is one who only works in the summer oh yeah just a bit of a dilettante i suppose a churchill is quite nice

um you will hear cabbies sometimes still talking about going to have a churchill and that's a meal because churchill win Winston Churchill, gave cabbies the right to refuse a fare when they were eating. That's the only time that they can say, no, I can't, I'm afraid. I can't take you anywhere because I'm having a Churchill. Oh, it's a break that's allowed. When Churchill was prime minister, he allowed them to have a break. Yes, and that's retained now, I think. You may not know this, or if you do, tell me, but if you don't, look it up and tell me another day. Somebody told me recently, it was a relative of Winston Churchill's, that Winston Churchill introduced the phrase United Nations. Oh, I didn't know that. He came across it somewhere, a literary turn of phrase, United Nations, and came up with the term United Nations that gave us the United Nations.

Ah. Isn't that interesting? That is interesting. I've not heard that before. Anyway, go on. I need to look that one up. Cabby speak. combinations ah isn't that interesting that is interesting i've not heard that before um okay so a leather ass is a cabbie who's worked particularly long hours oh and yes we get that one um and you might have to be a leather ass during the kipper season kipper season was a slow season in taxi terms apparently from the days when cabbies could only really afford to eat kippers oh i'm partial to a kipper.

And probably a kipper at breakfast is quite expensive now and a bit of a rarity. Yeah. But in those days, yes, the idea of children gnawing kippers' heads in the streets of London in the 1870s. The rag muffins, the tatterdemalians. Okay, a musher is a cabbie who owns their cab as opposed to one who rents it as most do. And on the cotton, I like this one, on the cotton is the shortest distance between two points,

but as straight as a thread of cotton between the starting and finishing lines on their map. So let's hope that every cab driver will take you somewhere on the cotton. And then just so many for passengers, because most cabbies will tell you that despite the sort of annoyances, that the variety of passengers, you know, makes their job worthwhile. Lots of exceptions. You might have a puker, which is a common term that they will use. There's also a bilker. A bilker is a passenger who runs off without paying. And I can't quite find out why. So if anyone knows. A bilker?

I think it must be an acronym, but yeah, bilker. How wonderful. Well, not how wonderful, how terrible. They are awful. They get out of the cab and just disappear. And by the time the cab is set foot chasing them, they don't catch up. Exactly.

The cage is the area where we sit, the passengers. A cock and hen. If you've got a cock and hen in the back, you've got a male and female passenger. Single pin is a solo passenger um and a golden roder is the dream ticket really that's someone who really wants to go far out into the suburbs um they love all that but it's it's the kind of landmarks and then i'll shut up it's the landmarks where i absolutely love it because london cabbies have a whole lot of

nicknames for the various destinations that are on the map. Shall I give you some? Okay. Den of Thieves or Fagin's Kitchen is the stock exchange. Oh, my goodness. So if I got into a cab and said I need to go to the Den of Thieves, you'd know it's Threadneedle Street. Is it Threadneedle?

Somewhere around there. That's the Bank of England, isn't it? Anyway, somewhere in the City of London. Yes. The Dirty Dozen, nice goes back to the olden days 12 roads through soho uh they run between regent street and charing cross road um i have to say i lived in soho for a long time it definitely wasn't dirty then well not really down the wasp that's walpole street anderson street sloan avenue and pelham street um my

favorite possibly guess what the gas works might be? The Gasworks. I don't know. Battersea? No, what institution might be the Gasworks? Oh, the Houses of Parliament. Very good. Westminster. I'm going down the Gasworks. Very good. The Scent Box. It's excellent wordplay, but it takes a little bit of unravelling this one. The Scent Box. Nothing to do with perfume.

Well, it's the rank at Kings Cross Station. Ooh, it's rank because it smells. The scent box, I love it. Exactly. It's clever stuff. They're clever people, Cappy, as often, aren't they? They really are. Another institution here for you, the tripe shop.

The tripe shop. Was that going to be back to Westminster? No. The talking tribe? No. Law courts? Broadcasting house. Oh, spot on. The Talking Tribe? No. Law Courts? Broadcasting House. Oh, spot on.

The Flower Pot? Covent Garden? Very good. Because it used to be the home of the flower market. Hasn't been there for many years. Exactly. This is an interesting one, looking back on history. The Resistance.

That's Harley Street. So cool because apparently it's private doctors resisted the formation of the NHS. Oh, interesting. Yeah, and so many. The Rat Hole is the ranker embankment. The Kremlin is the cab shelter by Albert Bridge. The Dead Zoo is the National History Museum, Natural History Museum, and so on and so on.

And the pipe, for any visitors to London, you'll recognise this. The pipe is the Blackwall Tunnel because it's clogged with traffic. Do you like talking to cab drivers? Are you chatty? It depends. It's quite difficult now because they've got so much kind of separating us from them, unless you really shout. So I haven't found it very easy to have a very natural conversation.

But, yes, when I do, I do enjoy it. Were you on Countdown when Kenneth Williams was a regular? No, I never met Kenneth. Kenneth, who is a good friend of mine, he loved to tell the story of getting into a cab and the cab driver told him, you know, Kenneth, Kenny, last week in the back of the cab, I had Bertrand Russell, the greatest philosopher in the Western world. And I said to him, Kenny, I said to him, Bert, Bert, what's it all about? And the bleeder didn't know. There you are.

So they can be full of fun. Yeah. I, in fact, spend most of my time on the underground or the bus, so I don't very often go on a cab. Yeah. And I have not got an account with whatever that firm is called, the famous firm. Uber.

That's an interesting, that's a word that's gone worldwide, and it's just the name meaning over. It's the German word over? Yes. So it's just a bit of like linguistic inflation, isn't it? Normally like you have the Ubermeister or I'm Uber cold or I'm Uber drunk, whatever. Thank you for sharing all that Hackney, it's not Hackney knowledge, it's new knowledge as far as I'm concerned. Should we take a break? Let's. Should I stop the meter? Yes. Wherever you're going, you better believe American Express will be right there with you. Heading for adventure? We'll help you breeze through security. Meeting friends a world away?

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Shrink the Books is back for a brand new season. This is the podcast where we put our favorite fictional TV characters into therapy. Join me, Ben Bailey-Smith, and our brand new

psychotherapist, Nimone Metaxas. Hi, Ben. Yes, this season we're going to be putting the likes of Tommy from Peaky Blinders, Cersei from Game of Thrones on the couch to learn why their behaviour creates so much drama. So make sure you press the follow button

to get new episodes as soon as they land on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Shrink the Box is a Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. This is Something Rhymes with Purple. I'm Giles Brandreth and I'm challenging my friend Susie Dent about Butterboy, which she is telling me is London cabbie slang for he's Butterboy. He's new to the profession of being a cab driver. I had heard from a cabbie that Butterboy was because these new people come along, the new young ones, and steal our bread and butter.

Young lads coming in, they think they know it all, they steal our bread and butter. Do you think that's possible? Very possible. I like that too. I mean, yes, I was literally going on what was told to me by the cabbies that I met, but you know, who knows? There are so many apocryphal stories, as we know, attached to word origin. I heard from another cabbie that oranges and lemons is their nickname for the main roads in London. That they have to learn for the knowledge. And he didn't explain why it was called oranges and lemons. Do you have any idea?

Could it be because the roots on the old 80s heads were oranges and lemons, the main roots? Oh, the main roads were either orange in colour or yellow. I love 80s sets. Do you still use one? No, I don't. I'm sat-nav dependent. I get totally lost. And that's why I literally on the sat-nav have driven across a field once. I was going down to somewhere on the south coast and I just followed the sat-nav and it took me into a field. And I stupidly went. I obeyed what the voice

told me to do how can one be so stupid you just become lulled into this sort of sense of comfort don't you and are you I mean we need a word actually for the panic that you feel when your sat-nav suddenly loses gps or something because we've got one for being without your mobile phone it's not brilliant nomophobia nomophobia yeah suddenly realizing you're without your mobile phone but yeah we need one for sat nav sat nav well this is something for our listeners and we have a lovely community of purple people and we love you purple people thank you very much indeed you can communicate with us on twitter we're both on twitter i'm giles b1 g G-Y-L-E-S-B-1. What are you, Susie? I'm Susie underscore Dent. And also you can communicate with us directly at Purple Towers, which is purple at something else

without a G in something, somethingelse.com. And people do get in touch, which is lovely. And have we had some interesting questions this week? We have. I think you have some there in front of us and you can give me a couple. I can try. I'm going to give you one here. Growler. Oh, no, not practical growlers. This is fast becoming the leitmotif of our show. Well, a growler in Victorian times, I know, because again, because of my reading of Arthur Conan Donner and Sherlock Holmes, a growler was a form of London cab, wasn't it? Fantastic. It growled along the roads. So here are two more versions sent in to us by Martin Cable. A small pork pie. I think this is generally a northern

thing, he says. Or a small iceberg is a growler. Oh, wow. Dear Susie and Giles, I work as an English language assistant at a university in the north of Italy, and I love your podcast, which I discovered fairly recently. It's like a sort of magical language mind producing one linguistic gem after another. Oh, that's nice. Thank you. What's her name? Her name is Elizabeth Greggs. Thank you, Elizabeth. This week, inspired by the podcast, I decided to give my students a word they wouldn't know and ask them what they thought it might mean. The word I gave them was grog blossom. Oh, one of my favourites. It is one of your favourites.

Their answers were creative and fun. Among the answers they came up with were, this is for grog blossom, a pond flower a frog might jump onto. Oh. Isn't that enchanting? That's gorgeous. A flower which has failed to develop correctly.

A cup shaped like a blossom and a warm brew which comes out of a plant. She adds in brackets, maybe more appropriate if the word had been blossom grog. My favourite definition,

says Elizabeth, interpreted grog as a portmanteau of a girl and a frog and had the meaning of an ugly girl who glows up to become beautiful. As in, wow,

she turned out to be a real grog blossom. Like a frog turns into a prince. Isn't that brilliant? And yes, I do mean glow up. My students tell me that it's a real phrasal verb, meaning to become something beautiful. Can you confirm? Can you confirm that? Have you heard of it before? To glow up? No. Well, only in makeup terms. Oh, well, but she's saying. Yeah, I like that. Of course, nobody knew the correct definition of grog blossom, a reddening of the nose after

drinking alcohol. But once I told them, they came up with some great examples in sentences. Quote, on a Friday night at the Christmas market, one can see many impressive grog blossoms. There's no way anyone will believe you haven't been drinking with that grog blossom. And as an adjective, my grog blossomed aunt asked me about my sexual orientation. I didn't inquire any further. Next week, I'm going to see what my students make of trampoose. Yes, love that. What was trampoose?

Trampoose is to trudge along reluctantly. Oh, I remember that. Yeah. Thank you, Elizabeth Gregson. A really fascinating letter and our best wishes to you and your students. This made me think of a game because, you know, you've appeared, haven't you, Dazan? I'm sorry, I haven't a clue. I have. And they have the most wonderful game of coming up with alternative definitions for everyday words. And Graham Garden, who lives quite near me actually, sent me a lovely set of cards from the Uxbridge English Dictionary. I'll give you some, and then maybe our listeners can come up with some others as well. Perversion, the cat side of the story, the perversion. One of my favourites is faculty, as in there's no more PG tips. That's faculty.

Oh, it's genius. That's brilliant, isn't it? Floral is foreplay on the carpet. Hold on. Floral? Floral. Oh, very good. I got it.

Intermittent or intermittent, where I go when camping. Intermittent. Oh, I love it. Intermittent. I love it. Intermittent. And this is probably my favourite,mittent. I love it. Intermittent. And this is probably my favourite, and it certainly made us laugh here in my family. Catastrophe.

Cat-ass trophy. Feline Rear of the Year Award. Catastrophe. They are genius. The team on, I'm sorry, I'm going to go, are genius. And he, Timbrook Taylor and Graham Garden are two wonderful, brilliant human beings. They certainly are. So anyway, if anyone's got any to add,

purple at somethingelse.com. No G in the something. Those were invented definitions. You've got real definitions for real words. Every week, if you're new to our podcast, welcome. We love having you with us. And this is the moment I love particularly because every week Susie introduces us to words that we may not be familiar with. And she gives us the definition, the true definition of the word.

What are the words this week? Okay, well, we are sitting in front of a fire, aren't we? It is actually a beautiful day today, a sunny day, but I can never get too much of a log fire. And if you like to bask either in the sun or in the warmth of a log fire in the winter, you are beaking, B-E-E-K-I-N-G. Now I have been warned by several people not to look for alternative definitions in any slang dictionary because occasionally they are obscene, but I've no idea what this one means in that sense. But beaking in my dictionary means to bask in the sun or the warmth of the fire. The second one, do idea giles what that blob perfect swish really of toothpaste

on toothpaste ads might be called hilarious of course i i'm not familiar with this because like the prince of wales my valet squeezes the tube of toothpaste i mean that little bit of toothpaste that's on the perfect perfect one with a little tip at the end and a little round at the front. Very cute. That is a nurdle. A nurdle? Yes.

A perfect little dollop of toothpaste is a nurdle? Yes, is a nurdle. Oh, I love it. Isn't that wonderful? I can't promise that anyone will ever have a chance to use it. I know this is for the language

that's got everything. Yes. It introduces the word nurdle. Speaking of having everything, I'm not looking at either my producer or you, Giles, at the moment. Dasypygal. That's D-A-S-Y-P-Y-G-A-L. Dasypygal.

It means having hairy buttocks. Oh, good grief. I leave it there. I think let's definitely leave it there. Yeah, I thought you say the word for everything. There is a word for everything. And Dassy Pagel is not. It's a word I hope I never have to use.

But it's a useful word to have in your repertoire. So thank you for your trio. Thank you very much for listening to our podcast. If you've enjoyed it, do please give us a nice review or recommend us to a friend. Let's grow the Purple community. If you have a question you'd like to ask or you'd just like to get in touch, you can also email us at purple at something else dot com. And it's

wonderful to have got listeners all over the world. I know, it's fantastic. We can't answer every question, but we will try our best and we genuinely read every single one of them. Something Rhymes with Purple is a Something Else production produced by Laurence Bassett with additional production from Jemima Rathbone, Steve Ackerman and Gully. Now if anybody has got Dazzy, I bet it is Gully. But I'm not

going to check.