Getting Off at Gateshead: The Stories Behind the Dirtiest Words and Phrases in the English Language

Jonathon Green

Where might it be advisable to bend your steps if you experienced an urgent need to bury a quaker? What would be your state of mind - or rather the state of your body - if someone described you as after your greens? How often does the average woman enjoy the pleasure of a visit from the cardinal? Under what circumstances would it be advisable to get out at Liverpool Edge Hill, rather than continuing all the way to Liverpool Lime Street? What is the exact nature of the complaint known as 'Irish toothache', and why is a hot poultice - or, failing that, a consultation with the eminent physician Dr Jerkoff - generally considered to be the only reliable cure? How old is the 'F' word and where does it come from? And has it always been verboten in polite society? "Getting Off at Gateshead" provides the answers to these, and to hundreds of other intriguing questions about words and phrases that are generally best avoided in job interviews, vicarage tea-parties, or when meeting your mother-in-law. The UK's leading slang expert Jonathon Green here provides the unexpurgated low-down on the downest and dirtiest expressions in the English language, some of them current, some of them obsolete - all of them utterly filthy, relating as they do to every conceivable human bodily function, whether sexual, masturbatory, menstrual, defecatory or emetic. "Getting out at Gateshead" not only tells the intriguing but little-known stories behind some familiar profanities - from the 'F' word to the 'C' word - it also offers a cornu-copia of less familiar terms that readers will be itching to regale their friends with.