Cockney rhyming translation. I'll fully admit I'm no expert, I'm a Geordie. I let cheese and kisses (missus) and the God forbids (kids) in the graton mouse (house) took flounder and dab (cab) down the frog and toad (road) and had a pleasant pint of pigs ear (beer) and a large pimple and blotch (scotch). Into English [I left the wife and kids in the house and took a taxi down the road to have a pint and a large scotch].
Please don't think the 'cockney' accent was genuine. Harry Enfield's absolutely hilarious take on 1930s British documentary films was spot-on, even to the messed-up working class accent. That was taken from actors from the era, who were invariably middle or upper class. They tried and failed to copy the way poorer people spoke. It was as unreal as Dick Van Dyke's 'mockney' in Mary Poppins thirty years later.
British actors in the 1940,s did not normally come from a working class back ground ...hence the corny working class accent...sometimes American actors would also do a funny English working class accent.
All that mumbo-jumbo Grayson was talking in the opening scene, is something known as “Cockney Rhyming Slang.” You probably know that “Cockney” is a term used for the working class natives of London (traditionally, you had to be born within earshot of the “Great Bell of Bow”, a church in London, to be classed as one, but the term has become a more general description of working class Londoners, easily identified by their specific accent.) “Cockney Rhyming Slang” is a form of code which evolved amongst Cockneys over previous centuries, to conceal what they were talking about when they were up to no good and didn’t want to be overheard. They replaced certain words with similar sounding ones. Hence, “Frog and Toad” = “road,” “Apples & Pears” = “Stairs,” “Whistle and Flute” = “suit,” “Trouble and Strife” = “wife,” “Goose and Duck” = …well, you get the picture. Grayson also uses some typical Cockney expressions such as “Guv’nor” (governor,) which is an informal, slightly derefential term they might use when addressing a superior, or a customer, or when apologising to someone.
There was a children's story published 100 plus years ago under the title " Little Black Sambo" which was about a young black child- written by a white woman , it has pretty much disappeared from sight. Culture does move on thankfully.
Was also used for people from India too. “Little Black Sambo” was also played on children’s radio programs, alongside other radio stories such as ‘little toot’ and ‘the hare and the tortoise’ etc,
@@AlBarzUK The story was written about a Tamil child by a Scotswoman in 1899 - I wouldn't expect attitudes of that era still to hold good today in any field.
The "N" word is more associated with the US, in the UK there were a few derogatory words for black Jamaican people - Sambo was one of them. The first black people to arrive in the UK in high numbers in the 50s and 60s were Pakistani and Jamaican. I grew up in the late seventies and although these slang words were used everywhere I personally had no hatred towards anyone. I grew up in a heavily Pakistani population and grew up on Jamaican reggae. I still feel the same 40 years later.
"Sambo" is a slightly less offensive (though not by much) term than "Fuzzy Wuzzy", as well as being somewhat more expansive in terms of which ethnic group it could be aimed at (anyone non-white, really). The time period this sketch is parodying was really the last decade in which a Victorian children's book about an Indian boy (although the illustrations made him look more like a golliwog, or a doll in blackface) was widely available, called "Little Black Sambo". Here, in this sketch, they deliberately invent the story "Simon Shoots the Smiling Sambos" to make it more palpably offensive. (By the way, I think your video jumps at 3:59 and 5:13. In any case, whatever you filmed doesn't appear to have recorded and/or uploaded in its entirety.)
No. Sambo has an exact dictionary definition: mixed race, more than 50% black. The rest might be white, Indian, Chinese, or whatever. The Fuzzy-Wuzzies were a Sudanese movement of Afro-Arabian Islamic militants led by the Mad Mahdi in the late 1800s, renowned for their wild Afro hair styles.
@@neuralwarp Think your dictionary is wrong - at least as far as commonly used in the UK in the 70s. Used when I was young, the term was very specifically black people. It was used in a comedy programme in the 70s called Love Thy Neighbour about two couples where both men were racists, the white calling the black neighbours "sambos" and the black guy referring to the white folks as "honkies". It wouldn't play now but is was very much an anti-racist tv show ridiculing the two men as the women got along fine.
Britain is part of the land mass that is Europe. That won’t change no matter how much we shoot our selves in the foot, otherwise known as ‘brexit’. I don’t think he was talking about the European Union!
See: "The Love Box in Your Living Room" by Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse, it's an absolute work of genius. Probably totally unfathomable to anyone who didn't grow up in Britain.
@@juliantompkins9650 Mmmm. No. It's a fantastic magnum opus. He's playing around like a kid while still having a swipe at the stupid left, the incompetent Torys, the ignorant in both the working, middle and upper classes, all 'through the medium' of Adam Curtis. If you thought that it was 'bloody awful' You're either: A. totally thick (and I mean totally, irredeemably thick) or B. A lefty who suspects he’s having a dig at the welfare state you can’t quite put your finger on it because (..back to the same point, you’re a bit thick)...or C. 12 years old. Wouldn't surprise me if you'd never seen an Adam Curtis 'documentary'; or if you had, and it all went totally over your head....because you’re a bit thick. 💓 (BTW, if you're not actually British i'll cut you some slack..but you wouldn't have got any of it anyway..so your comment was pointless)
My Mum had an outside *non flushing* toilet in the 1940's - it was a closet toilet ... pooping and weeing on the floor and covering it in ash from the coal fire - it was quite common
S@mbo is like saying the N word, but was a common used word in Britain. Agatha Christie's book 'And Then There Were None', was first published in the UK in 1939, as 'Ten Little Ni__@rs', after the children's counting rhyme and minstrel song, which serves as a major plot element. It changed it's name to 'And Then There Were None' for the American market (with paperbacks published as 'Ten Little Indians'). It continued being sold in Britain under the original title up to 1985! It is the world's best-selling mystery, and with over 100 million copies sold is one of the best-selling books of all time (coming in 6).
sambo is a black person and so is fuzzy wuzzy all statements that were fine up until the 80's then they become bad, however we can still call someone ginger or big nose
The s word was a term used to describe blackness, it was either half or three quarters black, not sure which. Originally it was a description then it turned into a term of abuse.
@@Isleofskye I don't think there was a fixed percentage, at least not to begin with. Indeed, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word was first used to describe people "of various degrees of mixed [African], Indian or European blood", and originally came from the Spanish "zambo"... which unfortunately means "baboon" in modern Spanish.
@@Junoleda No mention of proportions or percentages is given in any reliable definition of "mulatto" or "sambo" that I've found. They don't seem to have been exact measures, but bywords for people with arbitrary proportions of black/white heritage.
BOXINGS RULES, set by THE MARQUIS of QUEENSBURY, he protessted that his mate had punched him in the Queensberry rules , Cockney slang for, Family Jewels --i.e His Balls.
