A bona read!

Fabulosa! The Story of Britain's Secret Gay Language

Paul Baker

Reaktion Books

‘How bona to vada your dolly old eke!’ If you know what this means – or at least recognise something about the words – then a new publication from Reaktion Books might well be for you. If you don’t, then it still might be for you. 

But there is a proviso: Fabulosa! The Story of Britain's Secret Gay Language by Paul Baker will make some people uncomfortable. Polari, a slang that was used predominantly by theatre workers and camp gay men (mostly working class), was not for prudes.

The sentence that opens this post means ‘how nice to see your lovely old face.’ So nothing to worry anyone there.

But here’s another phrase I can remember without making an effort to learn: ‘Scharda there’s nada to vada in the larder’.

Literally, ‘a shame there’s nothing to see in then larder’. Euphemistically: ‘a shame he’s got a small penis’.

It’s a highly sexualised code and full of bitchy potential.

But then, as Baker explains, it was used by people who were outlaws within UK society – derided and persecuted on the basis of who they fancied/had sex with and how they presented. And Polari was not only an incredibly important way to communicate discretely, it also had a sense of in-your-face ‘fuck ’em’ in its bitchiness.

Baker, who has spent 25 years studying his subject, starts this book by carefully explaining the sort of technical stuff about what constitutes a language and, indeed, how Polari developed and from what roots. 

That’s fascinating enough – and it most certainly is – but in many ways, the book really gets into its stride when he starts to look deeper into why it developed: why, indeed, it was needed and what it gave to its users.

Polari has all but died out as a gay language since the end of the 1960s – partly because of decriminalisation (although Baker makes clear that that was far from the magic pill it can sound like now), but that that  also came at the end of its greatest prominence, when used as part of the Julian and Sandy sketches in the classic radio comedy, Round the Horne.

Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick were the eponymous pair: Baker interviewed co-writer Barry Took late in the latter’s life, and Took makes clear that the duo were the ones who knew Polari and fed that into the sketches. Took was apparently also rather shocked at some of the (possible) double, double meanings Williams in particular seems to have contributed, not least via ad-libbing.

But that actually emphasis how playful Polari was … how playful it IS.

One of the gay-friendly pubs in London, from the first half of the 20th century, that Baker mentions in the book – the Royal Oak on Columbia Road – was the first place I heard Polari: drinking with gay men who rattled off bits of Julian and Sandy as late as the 1990s.

I’ve long loved the camp bitchy thing – Priscilla, Queen of the Desert remains a favourite film, as does Victor/Victoria (even if the latter is not quite so camp bitchy). I don’t generally do personal ‘pride’ in much – but I do remain bloody chuffed with a couple of times I set the Oak crowd roaring with a comment.

Fabulosa! is an easy read – in places, very, very funny. But it is also a welcome social history that is a reminder of what gay men in the UK faced.

Very much recommended.