Lee Campbell
This article is part of the NOTCHES series on The Languages of Queer History.
Polari is the language of survival. Built on a literal pun — ‘Bona Polari’ is gay slang for ‘good chat’ — Polari is more than clever plays on words; it is a political act. From its earliest origins in the late 1800s to the decriminalisation of sex between men in England and Wales in 1967, gay men used Polari (mainly in bars and pubs) to communicate things in public that they didn’t always want others to know about. These days, Polari terms have made their way onto mainstream television (e.g. on RuPaul’s Drag Race), adopted by a diverse community of younger queens who may not know the origins of a particular word or phrase. But Polari in its earliest usage was used by white gay men, and its origins tell us a great deal about its persistent adaptability.
Although Polari in its current form has its origins in the 19th century, its precursors include thieves’ cant (a cryptolect used by criminals in the 17th and 18th centuries) and the lingua franca used by sailors and dockworkers. Polari also borrowed words from Romany. primarily transmitted through carnivals and festivals, as many theatres at the time were involved with carnivals that moved around Britain. The language is a colourful melting pot of all kinds of influences, as well as being flexible and adaptable. Sailors spread different versions around ports worldwide; Polari has this in common with similar queer cryptolects in other parts of the world such as Gayle in South African and Ulti Bhasha in India.
In London, two different versions of Polari emerged: an East End version emphasising Cockney rhyming slang with elements like ‘Vera’ (from Cockney slang ‘Vera Lynn’= gin) and ‘brandy’ (from Cockney slang ‘brandy’, brandy rum = bum); and a West End version which is allegedly more classical, drawing more on Italian. Amongst a plethora of socially oriented languages and dialects, Polari would have been one amongst several in the city. Sailors and chimney sweeps, for example, had their own occupational slang so Polari may not have stood out as being unusual amongst other social languages with subcultural origins.
Polari hovers between being blunt and not, and it allowed users ‘to get away with’ being very rude. It even featured on mainstream UK radio, for example, on the BBC radio show Round the Horne, which in its heyday had 20 million listeners. Julian and Sandy, two gay male characters, regularly spoke in Polari but the majority heteronormative listener would have been oblivious to the innuendo they were listening to and laughing at. Polari was never meant to be politically correct.
Polari could be said to be a language of contradiction; the language allows its users to say things without being obvious, yet a man can still call his male lover his husband. Polari is a language that can be played with and can be used to stretch language almost to its limit. Maybe its simplest cover is substituting ‘he’ for ‘she’ when a gay man wanted to talk about a man he liked the look of in public. This inverting of gender can be seen as well in The Tale of Benny Harris, a 2022 short film. The titular character’s name is a play on the Polari term ‘bene aris’, which translates to ‘[a man with a] nice bum’.
Whilst Polari is commonly associated with camp performers like comedian Kenneth Williams and often considered effeminate, The Tale of Benny Harris subverts gender, masculinity, and identity, most notably when a ‘butch’ policeman reveals he is gay by speaking in Polari to Benny. In this section of the film, (before Benny meets the gay policeman) Benny has his eyes on Andy and the barman gives him some advice. I write:
Benny’s excitement soon ended in scharda (disappointment)
when the barman took him aside and told him to nellyarda (listen)
‘Benny, mais oui, that number is nice to vada (look at)
But take it from me, Andy only tips the brandy (rims, as in ‘anal rimming’)
rather than charver an aspro-arva (having anal sex with a prostitute)
Have a shot of Vera (Vera Lynn – gin) You’ll vada (see) things clearer
She’s (He’s) part time in the life (a part-time homosexual), got chavvy (child) and wife
Not full time so (homosexual), she parkers the measures (pays money)
to feel what it’s like to have omee (homosexual) pleasures
Look she’s on the Polari pipe (telephone) now dear, nelly (listen) her mutter (speak)
Her taxi driver back home is her pastry cutter (a man whose oral sex technique involves digging into the skin of the penis with his teeth)’
As this passage shows, there is an enormous amount of creativity and joy in a language that came out of oppression at a time when it was harder to be gay in public. It allows users to be playful and funny like Kenneth Williams, who used Polari to communicate with other gay men covertly. Williams’s humour was audacious but respectful, treading a line that Polari users and the language itself walked as they moved through wider society. Polari made its quirky way into the mainstream, but without the mainstream realising that they were using it. For example, the term ‘zhoosh’, as in ‘zhoosh up your hair’, has Polari origins. ‘Naff’ in British slang means ‘unfashionable’, but in Polari it means ‘heterosexual’ and is said to be an acronym for ‘Not Available For Fucking’.
What is so fascinating about Polari is that some words are for things that can’t be openly talked about, and others seem just for fun or play. The need to be discreet can clearly be seen running through Polari, but so can the joy of rhyming and invention. Polari keeps you sharp, on your toes, trying to understand what’s going on. Initially used to maintain secrecy, it is also a means for socializing, acting out camp performances and reconstructing a shared gay identity and world view amongst its speakers. Did Polari take its words from the mainstream and change their meaning? Or was it the other way around? Either way, Polari remains subversive if its traditional users find some perverse humour in hearing these words repeated by non-members of the gay community.
Ed. note: For more on the history of Polari see important work by Paul Baker including Polari: The Lost Language of Gay Men (2002) and Fabulosa! The Story of Polari, Britain’s Secret Gay Language (2019).
Lee Campbell is an artist and Senior Lecturer at University of the Arts London. He has performed extensively across the world since 2000 including solo performances for the National Poetry Library, GuilFest, Brighton Fringe, Whitstable Biennale and Prague Biennale. His first chapbook ‘Slang Bang’ will be published by Back Room Poetry in November 2024 and debut poetry collection ‘See Me: An (Almost) Autobiography’ is forthcoming with London Poetry Books. His chapbook ‘Queering the Landscape’ has been shortlisted for the 2024 Broken Spine Chapbook Poetry Competition.
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