Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Polari: The Secret Language of Gay Men

Episode Date: September 26, 2023

It's a credit to the resilience of the gay community that when society tried to outlaw and silence them, they just created a language of their own to keep conversation (and gossip) alive. The language, polari, was born out of prejudice, and while it's now classified as endangered, many of its words are still used by us today.What were its many origins? When was it at its peak? And why did some of the gay community eventually start to turn its back on it?Kate's joined by Paul Baker, author of Fabulosa!: The Story of Polari, Britain's Secret Gay Language, to find out more.This episode was edited by Tom Delargy, and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code BETWIXT. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Lovely betwixters, how are you doing? It's so nice to have you here again. I do enjoy our time together. But before we can get into our time together, you know what's coming. You know what we've got to do first?

Yep, it's the fair do's warning. This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way about a range of adult subjects and you should be an adult too. And after you've listened to that, you can't get mad at us if you happen to get offended because of the adult content. Because fair do's, you were warned. Hello, betwixters.

How bona tovadi you dolly old eke. Fancy a bevy. Nope, you do not need to adjust your set, lovely listeners. I am merely communicating to you through the once-hidden gay language of Polari. Roughly translated what I said there was how lovely to see your dear old face fancy a drink. Seriously, the educational value of these episodes cannot be underestimated. First history and now languages. If they let us teach lessons in school, I think we'd live in a very different world.

Polari's journey is a fascinating one. It's one that takes in the Navy and the circus and the theatre world, and it even made its way into the heart of the establishment itself. The BBC. Curious to know more, well, I know I am. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. to rise when an adult speaks to you.

I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, I'm beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Dary. Oh, and welcome back to Betwixt the Shades, the history of sex scandal in society. With me, Kate Lister. I needed to cast your minds back to a not-so-distant time in our past when being gay was outlawed and it was outlawed and stigmatised to such an extent that it developed its own hidden language to help that subculture thrive and express itself. Polari, as it's known, was classified as an endangered language by Cambridge University in 2010, but there was a time when it was thriving.

Where did this language come from? Which words made their way into common parlance and why was it rejected by some of the gay community in more recent times. Joining us today is a returning guest, Paul Baker, author of Fabiolaosa, the story of Polari, Britain's secret gay language, and he is going to take us deep into this world. He also did an episode with us on The History of Camp, so if you enjoy that, scroll back and have a listen to that one as well. Right on with the show.

And welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Paul Baker. How are you doing? I'm fantastic. I'm so glad to be back. For the second time. For the second time. We couldn't get enough of you.

That's why. You're that fabulous. Thank you. There's no one else that I would rather be talking to about gay things, quite frankly. You are one of my favorites. That didn't sound like a very academic thing to say. But we are actually talking about a very specific gay thing. A gay thing.

Yes, we are talking about a very specific gay thing. And I'm fascinated by this, Polari. Polari. It's something that I've heard about and I've heard mention and I've seen reference to it in films and a few documentaries as this secret language that gay people used. Is that what it is? Or is it more than that?

What is it? That's pretty much just in a nutshell. Yes, it was a secret language like gay people used, not maybe a full language. Not all of them used it as a full language. Right. Not a lot of them used it as like a slang. They had a few words.

Okay. But it was secret. And they used it between each other to kind of hide their identities to other people. And also to have a laugh and to bond as well, I think. And also to be quite bitchy to each other sometimes too. Oh, nice. I like that. When does it become a language and when is it slang?

It's a language, I guess, when it has its own quite extensive vocabulary and a kind of quite unique grammar as well. So ways of expressing, say, past, present and future or who and did what to who and word order and things like that. And Polaro speakers relied a lot on English grammar. So they just changed a few of the nouns, verbs and adjectives. So that kind of tends it more towards a kind of a slang. But some speakers, I think, who got very good at it, started to kind of use it in ways where it wasn't the same grammar as English. And it made it quite hard to understand as well.

So I think it was approaching a language for some people. Wow. And then the other test is, can you talk about any topic in a language? You know, with say English, you can, I don't know, give a math lecture, have an argument about a film you saw last night. and discuss what you're going to do next day, all sorts of things. Whereas in Polari, sometimes it was harder to give a maths lecture, for example. Okay, so I'm with you. So this is more like swapping out words and new ones.

For new ones. And so this isn't like Dothraki, right? No, no, no. So we've got certain things that have been swapped in for slant. We have. And we've also got kind of attitude as well, I think, which was a kind of important bit of it. So it wasn't just you learn a kind of replacement word, but you learn a kind of a way of looking at the world. So sometimes it's been referred to as an anti-language, which is kind of what so-called anti-societies use.

And it's a kind of way of, I suppose, showing allegiance to each other, but also kind of showing that you don't like outsiders. So, for example, there were words to do with the police, and there were quite kind of derogatory words like Lily Law or Betty bracelets. So, you know, in that in itself, you've got this kind of quite sassy kind of attitude towards the police kind of feminizing them. and there was a lot of gender switching going on with Polari that was quite important to them. So it's not just the words, it's that kind of mindset, that kind of quite defiant, sassy, us against their mindset that you get, which you have to pick up as well, I think, so you can't just learn the words.

That's so true, isn't it? How many subcultures and subgroups rely on language for their identity? All of them must be that they've got their own terms for things, one way of referring, the one way of speaking, even if they're not necessarily swapping out word, the inflection, the accent, the delivery of it. It's all about identity forming. It is. It is. It's all about us and them, isn't it?

We speak in the same way because we're similar to each other and we don't speak differently to you because you're different. Yeah. Definitely. And so there's a lot of that. And then you get this extra layer of secrecy around it as well. So people would have whole conversations in it on the tube or on the train or the bus and there be people opposite. And they talk about their fashion sense, for example,

and talk about their clothing or if they fancied somebody, they talk about who they fancyed or they talk about what they're going. got up to last night with somebody after they gone home after the pub. And the people opposite wouldn't really know what was being said. They might think maybe this person speaking Italian or they're foreign or weird or whatever, but they wouldn't get the gist of it, which was just as well. Yes. Yes.

What time period we talk about here? Because I'm aware of different groups of people that have used a language trying to stay out of trouble with the police. Cockney rhyming slang is famously supposed to come from that particular origin. But that might not be true. Is that true? I don't know if it came from avoiding the police. I'm not sure what the kind of reasons for rhyme and slang were for. But there's bits of rhyme and slang in Polari.

Polari was a very kind of magpie of a kind of language. It got bits and pieces. So you've got cockney and rhyme and slang in Polari. You've also got something called back slang, saying words as if they're pronounced backwards. So the most probably well-known one for Polari is E-Caff, which is face. Ah. And it sometimes got shortened to Eek.

But then you've got things like E-Fink, which is knife, Emag, which is game. Esong, which is nose. You've got a whole kind of set of these. Just drop that into a conversation if you weren't prepared for it. That's actually quite mind-melding to even think about it.

So what kind of time period are we talking about here? Where is the first recorded use of Polari? Or had they done such a good job of keeping it secret that we don't know? It's hard to get the exact date because obviously secret and also they weren't recording devices. And it wasn't taken seriously so linguists didn't pay much attention to it.

But you get things that start to look a bit like Polari kind of at the turn of the 20th century, the start of it, and then going from the sort of 1900s to maybe the 1960s, particularly maybe in the 50s, I think, when there was a lot of persecution around gay people, but then a lot of people actually coming onto what was the start of a gay scene, that's probably when it had its heyday in the 50s, I'd say. Why did it come about? I mean, I know it's identity forming, but is it also a protection thing? Who was, was it just gay people using it?

Well, it comes out of an early language called Paliari, which sounds a bit like Pilari, And that was used by traveling people in the UK, people who worked with traveling circuses and fairgrounds and people who had kind of traveling markets that go from town to town. And people who were kind of street entertainers, buskers, things like that, that would go from town to town. So these were kind of itinerant people. They were connected to the entertainment industry. Sometimes there were sex workers as well. Sometimes they were kind of vagrants. They didn't really have a fixed abode.

And they were on the fringes of society. and because of that reason they had this language, which I suppose kind of connected them to each other and helped to protect them. And from that, you start to get Polari happening. It kind of Paliari finds its way into kind of musicals of the 19th century and then into theatres, particularly in places like the West End of London. And then you get a lot of kind of young gay guys running off to the city

and then becoming chorus boys or working in the West End. And so you get kind of London, particularly sort of inner London, becoming this kind of focus for this new identity around entertainment. So it kind of comes from theatre, I think, largely. But then it's supplemented with communities, say, in the East End of London, and sailors as well. There was a lot going on around sailors. It's interesting that you said that it was used by sex workers as well,

because that's a particular research interest of mine. What's the records of it being used within that community? Well, it was around places like Piccadilly Circus and Soho, which where we are now, not too far from it. Piccadilly Circus was a well-known kind of area for male sex workers. And they were called Dilly Boys, the Dilly Boys. And they would use it as a kind of tool of the trade. They'd use it to discuss other clients and how much money

and what people like to do or didn't do and all sorts of things like that. Wow. When you said there about Polariari, Lari, Lari. Spoken like a native. That presumably comes from the word parlay, which I hadn't thought of before. There's an Italian word, isn't it, Polaro to speak, I think. So there were links to Italian as well.

And there was this theory that Italian kind of entertainers came over to the UK, particularly working with say Punch and Judy stalls and things like that. And so they were kind of part of the reason why there's quite a bit of Italian in Polari. A lot of the words sound Italian or have Italian origins. What else is in there? So there's some Italian, there's some Cockney rhyming slang in there? Yeah, definitely. that's in there two back slang, little bits of Yiddish as well from possibly East Ends communities and Jewish communities.

Linguafranco, which is a kind of a language that was spoken around the Mediterranean by sailors, different ports. That's random, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. So again, it's sort of, there's a theory that sailors would learn this language, Lingua Franco, which wasn't a full language, but it was a useful trade language going around different ports in the Mediterranean. And then they'd often want to come back home. So they'd be dropped off at some random port like, say, Portsmouth or something or Southampton. Maybe they lived up in Newcastle. And you couldn't just pop on a train and get home in those days in the 19th or 18th century.

So you'd have to find a way to get home that was cheap and safe. So you'd join maybe a travelling circus or fairground. It doesn't sound very safe. Well, it was fun, I guess. And they'd maybe, you know, they'd work on in the fairground putting up their tents and things like that with the ropes and things. And they'd travel up the country. And so they would kind of feed in bits of their slang to the other workers. and the workers would feed in bits of slang to them.

So there's all this kind of crossover and kind of passing back and forth of different words to each other, which is quite lovely. So if this isn't something that really interested linguists early on and it kind of went unnoticed, well, or at least they didn't pay serious attention to it for a long time, how have you studied it? Like what sources as a historian are you going to to try and recover this?

It was hard. I studied this as a PhD topic. It was my PhD subject. Wow. Way back in sort of the mid to late 90s, when I started doing it. And even by that point, there weren't many people left in the country who spoke it or remembered it really well.

So why I did, I went down to Brighton, booked into a gay hotel there and kind of announced myself. I'm doing this PhD in Polari. And do you know anyone who spoke it? And of course, the people who ran the hotel did. And they kind of put me in touch with people. And then they put me in touch with more people. And it kind of spread like that.

So I went to an interview these kind of older guys who remembered it, some of them who still used it, not as much as they would have done. maybe 40 years earlier, but they still remembered it and used it enough. And I used the internet a bit. I put adverts and newspapers to try to get more speakers, things like that. So did you record all of these interviews? I did. Wow.

I did. Yeah. I was very young. I was 24 and terrified, I remember as well. Interviewing these drag queens who are kind of, you know, very strong, quite ferocious and kind of, you know, they ate me up pretty much. What did you even ask them? Like, you've got all that confidence of being 24 and everyone thinks their PhD is the most important thing in the world.

And then they learn pretty quick. Yeah, no one else cares about this for you. But you approach it with this kind of, of course, I'm so important. And then you realize, no, no, you're not. But what did you even say to them? Like, what kind of data? Did you give them questionnaires? No.

No, I didn't. I read some books. So I had some some ideas that often stuff that happened in those interviews were not on the books. But it was open-ended as survey or questionnaires. So I just say things like, you know, where did you use it? What words did you use? Gradually, I'd build up a list of words. as I went around and so I'd pull out my list and say, what do you reckon to these words?

Do you know any of them, any missing so that it would get bigger and bigger as I went from person to person? Wow. And how many people did you interview for that? About 20. And then sort of there were maybe about 40 extra people that I kind of talked to or was able to get the secondary sources. And then there were maybe about 100 people who emailed me and gave me a little bits of information, little jigsaw piece bits of information, maybe not for interviews to kind of supplement it. So I approached it from all sorts of angles. Yeah, triangulation. That's another one. Did you ever get the sense that someone was just making it up so it's joining?

I did sometimes, yeah. And once or twice I got an email and it would be in this kind of weird language and they'd say they spoke Chloe. And I thought, you're having me on. You're making this up. One of these words really exist. And sometimes I'd show people my list and then they'd kind of give me the wrong answers. And I'd think, you're just wrong. And I got the impression there was a right polari and there was a wrong polari, which was the wrong way to look at it.

Because the thing is, everyone was using it in different ways, developing it off their own bat and their own little communities. And so, of course, they were going to come up with different words and different pronunciations and different meanings. So there wasn't one correct way. There were lots. And that was a bit of a light-bould moment when I kind of got that. And it made me understand more about how secret languages work when they're not written down and there's not a standard. Was it geographically specific to anywhere? Or have you found this everywhere?

I found it in many places, big cities, particularly, Manchester, London, Liverpool. port cities as well, where ships are coming in and out. And also sort of seaside towns where there's an entertainment. If there's a pier in a theatre, you're probably going to have a Polari kind of thing going on at some point where you've got all the entertainers kind of coming for the summer season and then kind of spreading the glamour of the big city to those places. And then off they go. Was there anywhere that you really wanted to go, but you didn't get the chance to go? Like any Polari hotspots that you were like, I think that that will be the place.

I didn't look at Scotland. I mean, I did interview people from Scotland. who were on cruise ships and worked on ships and retired to the South Coast. And so they were able to tell me about their stories. But a lot of these men had retired. They'd all kind of like gravitated to the South Coast to live where the weather's a bit nicer. So we've got to talk then about some of the words. Yeah.

Because how many words did you reclaim in your research? There was about 400, I guess. Not all of those words would have been known by everybody or used by everybody. And quite a lot of them are kind of words for the same thing as well, which again suggests that's often a thing of slang where people discover what a word means and so you have to invent a new word to kind of keep up, keep it in secret. So there was that going on. About 400.

Presumably some of these words are still in common usage that they must have got loose from the stupid gay community and then everyone got involved. What, or is that? They did. Yeah. So my favourite probably is josh or jush. As in josh up? Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. And I love that word. It's an interesting one because it starts with a consonant sound that we don't usually use in England at the start of words. In French we do, je. Instantly makes a word sound quite exotic and foreign. If you say ju-s-o-j-j-j-j. You don't normally do that with your mouth.

When you say that word, you'll make your mouth quite camp as well, I think, which I like. And it's quite a versatile word as well. So you can jes your makeup, you can jes your hair. You can jes your bevy, which is like drink a drink down. It's bevy-pevier. Yeah. Although it's also a cockney rhyming slang, I think, as well. Or, no, it's from Italian Bavare, I think.

So it's drink. But yeah, bevy, you hear it in Cockney, don't you? Yeah, yeah. They'd still say that up north and definitely in Liverpool. Yes, yeah. And then stealing is juzhing as well. So you'd have a juzh bag and it would be your swag bag as well. So there's all sorts of ways you can use josh.

And Nath as well. Nath is another interesting one too. So yeah, that's something that maybe not as popular as it was in the 70s, but I think people still... I think it's a tonne. If you said something's naff, people still know it. talking about. Now, that's an interesting one.

Some people have said it's an acronym, N-A-W-F. Okay. Not available for fucking. I don't know whether that came later, but it was used by gay people and they say, oh, don't bother with him, he's naff, meaning, you know, he's not available. He's not, okay. Don't chase after him. And it gradually got associated with kind of tastelessness or kind of bad fashion or just

like ugliness as well. And then, of course, you get straight people hearing it. not understanding the meaning. Yes. And then using it themselves. And then it all kind of comes to a head with Princess Anne apparently using it. I think in 1982 during the badminton horse show trials, she was on a horse and it's a kind of famous equestrian competition.

And she fell off her horse. And the olfutographers rushed forward to take a photograph of her. And she shouted NAFOLF to them. And it got, as it was a headline in the newspapers. I suspect you might say a ruder word to NAF or off. But that's what it was headlined as. with Paul after this short break. All right, so you've got some that I've kind of definitely become common terms.

But what were some of the more interesting ones that you discovered? I love Jouge. Like, that's such a weird sounding word anyway. But what were some of the ones that, like, you really just got, it's a what? There were some very strange sort of sexual ones. So Coliseum Curtains. Oh, let me have a guess. Is that a vulva?

So Coliseum Curtain. No, not a vulva at foreskin. So, yeah, close though. What? What is it a curtain? I don't know. That's what I have here. I'm not doubting your research.

I believe you. I'm not suggesting that's not right. But I'm just trying to visualise. It's not like any colosseum I've seen. I like that, though. Okay, what else? Give me some other sexy genital. See if I can guess.

Okay. I'll go through my dictionary of it and see if I can get you some good ones. Cavaliers and roundheads, that's maybe an easier. Cavaliers and round heads. Is that penis related? It is. Is that the bell end?

You're in the right area. You're close. Oh, is it circums. No, what's the word? Yes, it is. Well, you've had the snip. It's the circumcision or not. Circumcision, thank you.

Circumcision or not circumcision. Yeah, definitely. And now I will never think of it as anything else. Anything else? No, no. Blob Queen. There was a whole kind of range of different kind of queens, but some of them have fallen out of fashion. So drag queen, obviously, we still know. But Blob Queen was one which kind of,

has fallen into disuse. Is that a large gay man? That's a good guess, but no, sadly, it's a kind of a gay man of no consequence who maybe attaches himself to a kind of more glamorous person, like maybe a drag queen and tags along behind hoping the glitter will fall off. Oh, that's kind of sad. It was a mean kind of language at times. I thought that's really bitchy.

I know. So, yeah, I think probably we all know a blob queen, I think. Yeah, definitely. We all maybe do. I think I've dated a few. So maybe that's one to come back. Maybe that is. Oh, proper blob queen.

I'm going to use that and see if anybody questions me on it. Is it mostly gay men that are using this? Are there slangs that are particular to women? Gay women for you. Well, I'm just thinking, I want to know what some Polari slang for pussy is. Oh, right. Give me a minute. Or it just, it never even entered the lexicon because they were just like, the what?

No, there were lots, I think. I just need to go through my little dictionary and find them all. I suppose Minge is Pilari, is it? Yeah, I've got Minge, a vagina, bracket's derogatory. See, I think that I might have been a gay man in a past life. So if you're going to describe someone as having a nath minge, that's just pure Pilari. It is. Look at this. It's so easy to pick up.

What are some of the more unusual one? I'd like to sort of say a sentence with Pilari in it and sort of get a sense of what that might sound like. If you can get a hold of what it might mean. Okay. Well, I'll give you maybe one that has a slightly sort of weird grammar to it to see if you can kind of pick it up. So I'd say, um, Pallone, Vaud as Omi-Pollone-Dary-Cod. Oh, yeah, I don't know what that means.

That sounds Welsh. Yeah. One more time. Palone Vauders Omu Pallon very cod. Polone? No, I don't know what that is. Okay. So Pallon is a woman.

Right. And Vardas is to look. Okay. And Omie Pallon's a weird one because Omi is man and Pallon is woman. And so literally an Omie Pallon is a man-woman. And it's what. gay men who spoke plural, called themselves. They were Omu Polones or Omu Polonis.

A lesbian was a Polonomi, a woman, man. They switched the order around. This was complicated. Not a very politically correct language as well, I should point out. It was not a politically correct time. So Polone, Vard is Omu Polon, very cod. Now, cod means bad. Right.

So put that together. You've got Polone, woman. Yep. Vard is looks. Only Polone gay man. Very bad. The gay man looks like a woman and they look shape. woman looks gay man very bad

you have to think of the context so imagine you were in a kind of cafe and you're talking with your friend and you were polarying your head off and there's a woman sitting nearby Oh she's giving you the side eye Yes Perfect

Yes Yeah you got it I wouldn't have got that though It would be spoken that fast Yeah you'd be like Plumbobleble like that And it would just be like that really quick Yeah

That's crazy So what happened to this language It sounds like it's really rich Like you've recovered hundreds of words You've discovered communities of people that were using it, but now it's kind of four. Where did it go? It was like a meeting and everyone's went,

oh me, Poloni, lonely, which meant that we're not doing it. It's over. There was an edict by Quentin Chris or something. No, it's enough now. We're not doing it anymore. Well, there was a really popular radio series called Round the Horn and with Kenneth Williams in it. Yes.

And they use Polari in this radio series every week and it was very popular. It would listen to it. And I think that spoiled the secret a bit. That was late 60s. But then there was also decriminalization of homosexuality in 1967, partial decriminalization. So there was a lesser of a need for a secret. And then instead you get in the 70s, early 70s, gay liberation front, and these senses of gay pride and gay lib and the concept of coming out to the closet and being open and wanting equality,

not about secrecy. And there was also a bit of a kind of backlash against camp during that period as well, an idea that it was maybe demeaning to women. And it was kind of stereotyping and boxing in gay men is only allowed to be a certain type of person. So there was all kind of movements going on. And also at the same time, gay men were going on holiday to America and discovering these quite macho cultures there on the gay scene places like San Francisco, where everyone wore leather, went to the gym or denim and had beards and moustaches and had an image of being butching if they weren't that butch in reality. So Polari, which was a kind of camp thing, it started to be seen as.

is less fun, maybe a bit restrictive. There were articles written in gay magazines in the early 70s saying, you know, it's a bit ghettoizing. We don't need it. Wow. And it started to be seen as less fashionable. And then a kind of an old thing as well. Like it's the old people. Yeah, exactly.

It was over. It's done. If you're using it, you kind of, it's just really, yeah. There's a word in Polari, BMQ, which stands for black market queen. Oh. That's a good one. That's another type of queen. So can you guess what that is?

A black market queen. Yeah. See, when he said BMQ, I thought of BianQ, which is a hardware store. And now the only thing I can think of is like a gay person who needs blackboard paint. But that's probably not what that means. But the black market was the kind of underground kind of market of World War II. So to be a black market queen, you were kind of underground. You were hiding secrecy, a closet queen.

A closet queen? Yeah. You were kind of, you're on the black market. You kind of were hiding your sexuality. I see. Yeah. Sometimes they were called phantoms. And it's a kind of term that dates you, I think.

If you're calling somebody a black market queen in 1976, you're basically saying, I lived through World War II. Yes, nobody's. And it's amazing how fast slang will date you, isn't it? Yeah. And that's it with Polari. I think it started to date people as well. Just even using it, any of it, I think, but particularly some of the terms. And some of the words as well are not particularly nice words.

There are words in there which have a kind of racist or misogynist kind of attitude, I think. And so that was seen as very problematic. and another reason maybe to ditch the whole thing. So it became very uncool. And by the time I came along in the 90s, it was almost forgotten. And I remember going out on the gay scene, no one was using it. I think there was one word maybe from it, chicken. Younger man.

Yeah. And I got called it a lot. I think I was the last chicken in Britain. Oh, Paul. That's the... Because after that, it was twink, wasn't it, I think. Twink? Yeah.

Yes. When do you stop being a twink? 25. Then you're a twonk. If you're lucky. Or a twunk. See, but they're still using slang. Oh, yes, it hasn't gone away.

It's still very much within communities and gay cultures still have their own slang. They do. They do. And I think it's come more from America now than in the UK, at least than it did. So, you know, a term like closet case or closet queen. I don't know about you, but I don't have a closet, I have a wardrobe. No. But wardrobe queen doesn't have the same kind of like... That's something else, that one, isn't it?

Has I now got to a point where it's kind of a cool again? Because things happen like this all the time, don't they? Something goes out of fashion. And then in the immediate aftermath, it's kind of very aging and it's very kind of just like, oh my God, like you're doing what? And then enough time goes past. And then suddenly everyone's going, oh, my God, that was actually quite cool. Yeah, like ripped jeans. So I think there was a period in the 90s when it started to get used for kind of almost political purposes.

So there was a group called the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. So a kind of group of male nuns who had carried out house blessings and they'd sainted various gay people who were of note as well. well. And they started using Polari in their ceremonies when they were sainting people. Were they real nuns? Sorry, you might just have to unpack this for a second. You can't just drop that in. There was a group of gay nuns growing around to people's houses in the 90s. They still exist. And they're all over the world as well, not just in the UK. They're American initially. But there was a London branch. And so you had to join. There was a ceremony to join and everything. And you had to make your own habit as well. You have to sew it properly. And so the British one started to

use Polari because they felt it would kind of give their ceremonies a bit of umph. And it was a bit like how Latinist Catholics. It's a dead language. So Polari's like the Latin of gay men. Wow. So they canonized very famously Derek Jarman, the gay filmmaker. And they use Polari in this ceremony. And they kind of brought it back in a way. They made a little dictionary of themselves. And through that, there was interest within academic circles. And so people like me got to know about it. There were articles published. And it became suddenly a kind of respectable topic. which I think is quite nice. I love that.

Yeah. So final question. Are the groups of people that use it just today is just a language, not as like, you know, a sainted nun thing? But like just is it still used by any groups, maybe older people? It is. There's still friendship groups that use it, definitely. And I still hear little bits and pieces of it when I go to different pubs and things. There's a one by King's Cross called Central Station.

I was in their last week and somebody used a Polari word at me. me just one word, but I was on it. What was the word? Was it jush or something like that? But I was like, oh, that's from Polari. So yeah, I do still hear it occasionally among older gay men, definitely. I'm so glad that you've done this work and that you've been able to be part of a movement to recover this. Because wouldn't it be crap if this was just like gone forever and ever?

That was it. I was really concerned it would be. And it's such a fun language and such a kind of insight onto a group of people who's whose stories didn't get told and were often just seen as kind of the comedy punchline in a film or a TV show or something or they were the villain or they got killed off early on or something. And I really wanted to kind of tell a story

of what it was like to be them and how this language came about and what it meant to them and how it helped them get through quite a tough period of homophobic time. Paul, how would I say it's been a pleasure to talk to you in Polari? Bona to Polari, you, Paul.

Bona to Bilari, you Paul. I love that. Bona to Polari, you Paul. Thank you so much for joining me today. If people want to know more about you and your work, and they should, quite frankly, where can they find you? Go to Amazon, you can Google my name, I've got an author page, and you can look at my latest books. Fabiolaosa is the one on Polari. Amazing. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you so much to Paul for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review, and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject or if you just fancied saying hello, you can get us at betwixt at historyhit.com. We have got upcoming episodes on everything from Caesar's sex life to the age of consent. This podcast was edited by Tom Delagie and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.

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