How's Your Father?

For no particular reason I've been thinking about the expressions I would often hear in my childhood that seem no longer to be current. Things like, "You daft 'a'porth!", "I'll put salt on your tail!", "Corks!", "So 'elp me!", "That's enough of your sauce!", "Done up like a pox-doctor's clerk", and so on. If that sounds like I grew up in a parody of a Cockney sit-com, that's not entirely inaccurate. Although my family were local yokels, most of our New Town friends and neighbours were East Enders displaced by the Blitz. My godparents, Auntie Win and Uncle Les, could easily have been characterful extras in the Queen Vic.

So the other day, like a bubble rising to the surface of my memory-pond, I seemed to hear my paternal grandmother's voice exclaiming, "What a right old how's your father!" Which is certainly not something you'd hear anybody say today, but then Daisy Mabbit was born in 1893. Although I have to say that, now it's bubbled up again, I quite fancy saying it myself whenever a particularly intricate cock-up presents itself. I like its Britishness, it's mouth-filling resonance, and the way it avoids both unnecessary crudity and imported Americanisms like "snafu" or "clusterfuck".

But it made me wonder: what does the expression "how's your father" actually mean? Where does it come from?

Obviously, the essential underlying reference is to sex. "Fancy a bit of 'ow's yer farver, sweetheart?" is unambiguous, but as a direct invitation to a knee-trembler, a leg-over, a bit of the other, or some rumpy-pumpy, it is curiously circumlocutory, not to say periphrastic. I mean, never mind love, what on earth does the state of health of anyone's father have to do with it?

It seems all roads lead to Harry Tate, a popular comedian of the British music hall's glory days, now completely erased from the communal memory. The appeal of Tate's routines has gone the way of all historic humour: you really had to be there (1920, that is). But it seems some of his catchphrases entered the language, and one of these was "How's your father?" According to Wikipedia:

Several catch phrases he used became popular in Britain in the twentieth century, including "Good-bye-ee!", which inspired the popular First World War song written by Weston and Lee; "How's your father?", which Tate used as an escape clause when his character was unable to think of an answer to a question; and "I don't think", used as an ironic postscript, as in "He's a nice chap – I don't think".

It's a bit of a leap from there to a euphemism for sex, though, and even further to an expression for an all-encompassing malfunction, a complete and utter balls-up. Most examinations of the phrase I've come across conclude that the most common use of Tate's catchphrase in its day was as a neutral placeholder like "thingummy" or "wotsit". Although I suppose in the sniggering culture of innuendo that has characterised British humour for so long, any allusion to an unnamed activity or thing inevitably gravitated to, ah, down there; a man's wotsit was never going to be his nose.

My own theory, FWIW, is that the superficially innocent question "how's your father?" carries within it a concealed anagrammatic barb: who's your father? That is, are you sure you know? As the eternal wisdom has it: mater certa, pater semper incertus (mummy's baby, daddy's maybe...). Which easily short-circuits – or perhaps nudges is the better word – the receptive mind to, you know, that. And from a bit of the other on the wrong side of the blanket it's not far to the moral chaos that the churches and the authorities feared would be unleashed if sex were ever to come out from behind that prophylactic barrier of euphemism and nudging concealment.

Now that it has, though – wotsits, thingummies, and everything! – there seems to have been a tidal drift in the other direction, where "language" is concerned. The word "fuck", for example – not so long ago absolutely taboo, even partially-clad as "the F-word" – has itself become a naughty-but-neutral placeholder, declared fit for use in publicly broadcast adult entertainments, as famously demonstrated in the episode of The Wire in which detectives Moreland and McNulty examine a crime scene using variations of just the one multivalent word. In Mark Lawson's telling timeline ( in "Has swearing lost its power to shock?"):

• 1965: Kenneth Tynan says 'fuck' on TV and four motions are tabled in parliament
• 1976: the Sex Pistols use it on a teatime show and are banned from TV
• 2004: more than 10 million people watch John Lydon use the 'C' word and fewer than 100 complain.

To declare that, for example, some fuckwit knows fuck-all about fucking photography does not remotely hint at any sexual activity, and it would be weird if it did. It merely shows that the speaker is quite annoyed, and not afraid of using a little salty language to let it be known.

If you want to be genuinely offensive you need to look elsewhere today. Ethnicity has always been a minefield, of course. Stay well away, or tread very, very carefully. Some careful terminological tiptoeing is also often required now that "blended families" have become so commonplace. Father? Mother? Not so fast with your reductive tick-boxes, chum... Things are a bit more complicated than that around here! People have become quite touchy about really basic items of vocabulary, too. In some circles the use of an inappropriate pronoun – a.k.a. "misgendering" – can induce outrage, although I'm afraid at my age the idea of anyone – however vague or comprehensive their gender might be – demanding to be referred to as "they" is both strange and not a little confusing. Not least as this (presumably?) mainly happens in their absence. I had always thought I was being pretty progressive by using "they" as a gender-neutral third person singular pronoun, but the world will keep moving on, won't they?

It seems there will always be new and exciting ways to set yourself up for the satisfaction of being appalled and insulted. How very dare you! I am shocked! Shocked, I tell you! It's all very confusing to anyone who grew up carefully stepping around one set of taboos, only to be tripped arse over tit by another. Flippin' 'eck! Oops, excuse my French! Um... How's your father, by the way?