Bona to vada your dolly old eek

Imagine you’re a gay man living in the year 1950. Not unnaturally, you would like to meet another gay man. How to identify yourself to a potential partner? A confession might bring the police; dressing and carrying yourself in distinctive ways will invite ridicule or violence in the street. The solution is this: you casually remark to a stranger that the pub you are both in is ‘naff’. He looks up, and before you know it, you’re talking like this:

‘Pauline? Can’t swing a cat but hit a cove. She’s had nanti bully fake. Dyed her riah, her end’s a right mess.’
‘Nanti bona. I hope she vaggeried straight to the crimper.’
‘Well that’s where she’d been. The palone tried to give her an Irish. Moultee palaver.Pauline told her to shove her shyckle up her khyber.’

This is taken from Putting on the Dish, a brilliant 2015 short film recreation by ‘Brian and Karl’ of the secret speech of gay men before 1960.