More Balderdash & Piffle

I have caught the last two episodes of Balderdash and Piffle on BBC2 with Victoria Coren and her search for the origin of words.

Victoria just oozes sex appeal even managing to flirt with the people from the OED. I have been thinking on what quite characterises "the Coren effect" or what constitutes "the full Coren". The Coren look has a bit of the Mona Lisa look about her, it is a bit of a "come hither" look suggesting that a trip to the bedroom to fulfil your wildest dreams could be just around the corner.

The sultry seductive look she gives the camera is a promise of care free naughtiness, with the light on, behind the bedroom door.

In "euphemisms - the lace curtain of language" Victoria investigated a whole raft of different euphemisms. There was a long dull rambling story about the supposed origins of the word "loo" which pretty much bored me senseless and proved absolutely nothing.

Michael Portillo then popped up to save the day by talking about war euphemisms. He explored both the military slang and the more modern practice of politicians creating more palatable expressions about war for the general public. These included the classic "regime change" to indicate a change in government usually by military force and the rather obscure "transport tubes" a more palatable but obscure reference to military body bags.

Out of this show I also learnt the true meaning of "glamour model" I had always assumed it just referred to trashy or cheap modelling work but it actually refers to soft porn / topless fashion work.

In "Dodgy dealings" Victoria investigated the language of the criminal underworld. They had Suggs on investigating "Jack the lad" and a Scottish archaeologist investigating the "Glasgow kiss".

They also looked into the origin of the word "spiv" which refers to a smartly dressed man who lives by his wits and has no regular employment. They managed to date this back to a reference to "spives", a gang who were running scams on the trains between London and Manchester in the 1930's. They also traced a newspaper reference back to the early years of the 20th Century where a common London criminal had the nickname of "spiv".

Victoria hot footed it back to the OED with the references, they accepted the first but rejected the second suggesting it was a Romany reference and not a true "spiv" reference. I think they just didn't want to move the anti dating back a full 30 years. The misspelling of "spives" could easily have been a different word yet because it was closer in date to the current reference they were happy to let it pass.