Yes, you can help the non-British understand XTC lyrics. There are already wonderful online references such as the

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, but you can help directly.
What's one XTC lyric that made you think, "The Yanks wouldn't have the foggiest, old horse! Rah-tha!" — and I suppose you talk to yourself that way because you're schizoid and the other half of your split personality is borrowed from a P.G. Wodehouse story.

Anyway, we non-Brits can ask questions, but we don't know what we don't know.

If someone would answer a small one:

In "Frivolous Tonight," Colin used the phrase "...a bit of a shower..."
The New Shorter OED says, "a worthless or contemptible person or group; a pitiful collection"
Is that a little harsher than normal usage?
Is that the way Terry-Thomas used it?

"Right-o, old bean!"


image posted by SM

Often, at the fitba', paranoid android can be heard to utter "mon, Hearts - intae this shower"!

Indeed, a worthless or contemptible group, or a pitiful collection - a rabble if you will!

Or, in the BBC's wonderful 'The Royle Family', Barb can often be heard to refer to Jim, Antony, Dave, Twiggy, etc as 'a shower of shite'.

The British are charming, are they not?

Al.x

Terry Thomas also used it in the singular - referring to an individual as 'a shower' or 'a bit of a shower'.

This is what I miss about the old forum.
We had a few huge threads of English English/American English translations.
And now they're all lost.

It's difficult to respond to your request, AS, without feeling as though I am being arrogant and patronising. After all, I don't know what you don't know either.

Nonetheless, I will have a go.

"See the greenman blow his kiss from high church wall"

Although the Green Man is a resolutely pagan figure, his image adorns many old English churches.

With apologies for my arrogance and condescension to everyone who already knew that.

So I can't tell you what I don't know, but maybe what I didn’t know without outside help will describe the breadth and depth of my ignorance:

Basically, all the

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, and much of the

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:
“Omnibus”
The word “clippie” is an old slang word for bus conductor (or conductress in this case). There used to be an old early-seventies UK TV comedy show called On the buses (starring the wonderful Reg Varney) where all the girls were referred to as clippies.
“Aunt Sally”
A pub game played, in Oxfordshire and bits of Wiltshire and Berkshire, by throwing a stick at a white “head” or “dolly”.
“Mills and Boon”
Mills and Boon publish English romance novels (“trashies”).
“Milk Tray”
Milk Tray is a box of chocolates. UK TV commercials feature death defying ways a guy can bring the candy to his love, including dropping down from the sky in a parachute (a spoof of James Bond kind of thing).
“Rael Brook shirts”
Rael Brook are a well-known brand of conservative dress shirt.
“Red Brick Dream”
“Castles and Kings” and the “North Star” were classes of steam locomotive.
“Train Running Low on Soul Coal”
A “Sprinter” is also a train engine, but a modern one this time. They'd have been brand new when the album came out. They're short (usually two coach) diesel units and are, incidentally, incredibly bad. Some of them are not much more than rail-mounted busses.
“Happy Families”
The name of a British card game.
“Senses Working Overtime”
“England's Glory” is a brand of wooden matches. Their slogan was, at one time, “A striking beauty”.
“She's So Square”
Cath McGowan was the (at the time) ultra-hip host of a pop music program in the UK called Ready, Steady, Go! It was apparently trendier than Top of the Pops was during its run from 1963 to 1967.
“Towers of London”
… “Never, never” is typically an expression for buying things on credit...
“Wait Till Your Boat Goes Down”
The cover of the single is modelled after “Ship” brand box matches.
“Leisure”
Andy sings two lines from “Lazybones”, a Tin Pan Alley classic written by Hoagy Carmichael, but changes them to fit the song: “Lazybones, looking through The Sun / how d'you ever expect to get your day's work...”. The Sun is a tabloid newspaper in the UK, and not one in which one might be expected to find job adverts. (“What a perfect way to sum-up the song! Too bloody clever by half that Partridge bloke...” says Mick Casey.)
“Chalkhills and Children”
“Ermine Street” is one of Britain's traditional “Royal Roads” dating from Roman times and probably earlier. The best known one is Watling Street, which runs from London (and is now the A5) to Shrewsbury. The others are Icknield Street and the Fosse Way. Ermine Street runs north from London towards Lincoln, and was a major Roman road. The most obvious straight stretch is now used by the A10 and A14, between Cheshunt (London) and Huntingdon. However, there is a Roman road called “Ermin Street” which touches the outskirts of Swindon and goes to the Roman town of Cirencester. This passes about a mile from Andy's childhood home. It has always annoyed me how they misspelt “Ermin” on the album sleeve! Another Roman road is the Ridgeway, which passes close to the Uffington Horse. Andy Partridge wrote a song entitled “Ridgeway Path”.
“1000 Umbrellas”
“Sunny Jim” was a cartoon character used to advertise a breakfast cereal, called “Force”, many years ago. (Something like “Over the roofs jumps Sunny Jim, FORCE is the food that nourishes him” — hence Andy Partridge's line “Sunny Jim couldn't jump it”.)
Nowadays Sunny Jim is used as a slightly patronizing term for a young man (e.g., “Don't get lippy with me Sunny Jim”), and is usually followed by a punch in the face.

The term 'shower' may have a slightly more unusual history. It was a common insult in the British Army of the early 20th C, to use the Tamil term 'sua' , a pig. Its most well-known modern usage was by Nancy Mitford in her novel, 'Love in a Cold Climate', where her irascible old Major of a father used it to refer to any male he deemed disreputable. It may be that 'sua' metathesised into 'shower' via the returned ranks of the British Army from India, from where we got such other 'English' words as gym, shampoo, and curry.
Of course, it may have originated with the popular phrase, 'You must think I came down in the last shower.'
Which is what you're thinking about my theory right now.

You bloody shower!

So keltic how deos the fit in with the phrase Golden Showers which I have seen a few times on film... ???

Vinegar stroke? More tea, Vicar?

I'd be your Nelson if you'd be my Hamilton, what fun from I'd Like That:

'Nelsons' is rhyming slang for money (Nelson Eddys = readies).

'Hamilton' refers to the British former-MP Neil Hamilton, whose involvment in the famous 'cash-for-questions' scandal lost him his parliamentary seat. The accusation against him was that he took money (or 'Nelsons'), in brown envelopes, from Mohammed al-Fayed for asking certain questions in the House of Commons.

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