Rhyming slang and toad" (the main road) and "apples and pears (stairs), as well as many more obscure examples, e.g. "Battle of the Nile" (a tile, a vulgar term for a hat), "Duke of York" (take a walk), and "Top of Rom" (home). It remains a matter of speculation whether rhyming slang was a linguistic accident, a game, or a cryptolect developed intentionally to confuse non-locals. If deliberate, it may also have been used to maintain a sense of community, or to allow traders to talk amongst themselves in marketplaces in order to facilitate collusion, without customers knowing what they were saying,
Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be Dark and Tamba Allen. It was a Cockney comedy and the dialogue is in the Cockney dialect with much rhyming slang and thieves' cant. Some audiences found it difficult to understand, and a list of more than a dozen phrases with standard English translations was supplied in the programme. The characters in the play were a selection of the low-life of London; a collection of gamblers, spivs, prostitutes, teddy boys and girls and some not-too-honest police. The title song, "Fings ain't wot they used t'be", was memorable and was recorded by Max Bygraves, albeit with heavily bowdlerised lyrics. An original