Jarman said it was one of the happiest moments of his life. They canonised the gay film director Derek Jarman, months before he died from an AIDS related illness. The Sisters are a political organisation providing help to gay communities in various ways. A group of male nuns called the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence adopted Polari in their ceremonies. Polari was starting to be seen as an old man’s thing and not very politically correct.īut by the 1990s views started to change again. Times were changing and many younger gay people wanted to be out and were concerned with political rights. The Round the Horne sketches in the late 1960s had introduced Polari to the mainstream public and homosexuality was partially decriminalised in 1967 so speaking in a secret code was starting to be seen as a bit naff (itself a Polari word). Once women and people from countries like Goa and Mexico started to get employed in the ‘70s and ‘80s, the gay subculture onboard declined quite a bit and Polari itself was starting to be seen as superfluous. And it was not unknown for these men to get into relationships with the butch straight men onboard. Sometimes these names could contain a little sting in them, to stop someone from getting too uppity. They called themselves queens or girls and “christened” one another with Camp Names like The Black Widow, Scotch Flo or Lana Turner. They camped it up, put on drag shows and generally had a whale of a time, often making lifelong friends and forming relationships. The Merch’ was a place of freedom for these men, who were able to escape the oppressive atmosphere back home. In the ‘50s and ‘60s more than a few gay men joined the Merchant Navy to serve as waiters or stewards and there was a strong sense of community among them.

Another popular place to have heard it would be in the cabins of the crew of glamorous cruise liners (latties on water). Backstage, dancers were called wallopers and singers were voches. An older form of it called Parlyaree was used in the 19th century by travelling entertainers and fairground people, and from there it found its way into the music halls and then the theatres.

Polari was popular in theatres around the UK and many actors still know a few words. Some of them get quite cross with the “Polari” spelling, which was used by the lexicographer Eric Partridge back in the 1950s and seems to have stuck. There are no standardised spellings incidentally, and many of the older speakers knew Polari as Palare, Parlary or Palari. Some words were spoken as if they were spelled backwards, like ecafe (face), although to make it more complicated, ecafe was shortened to eke or eek. Polari is a bit of a magpie – borrowing terms from Italian, Cockney Rhyming Slang and Yiddish, as well as incorporating slang words from the gay subculture of the time. Kenneth Williams by Godfrey Argent © National Portrait Gallery, London

Gay lingo meaning