Having endured a non-selective standard high school education, I’m rather partial to using cockney colloquialisms; especially around my South London born chum Ray.

Ray, or Brick Top as I like to call him, is absolutely riddled with Camberwell clichè; my Dad was from the area and used the same expressions. Oddly comforting.

One term I’ve not heard in AGES is to ‘Chor’ something. Chor is a cheeky cockney word for stealing, ch as is cheese and or as in board. You heard it a lot around my school, especially outside the local cornershop at lunchtime!

“Where d’ya get them custard creams Wes?!?”

“I chored ’em off the Paki’s didni!!!”

Ah, how I look back fondly on my school years, the acorn fights, the stealing, the truancy. Sorry, I digress.

What I didn’t expect was Hitesh, my Hindu speaking colleague, to explain that Chor is in fact an Indian word with the same meaning.

The irony, whities stole the Hindu word for steal?!?? Ha ha ha ha!!!

I’m no longer surprised when I learn that something I had considered a localism in fact then turns out to have colonial origins; it’s pretty funky? Whatever next….

LEGAL DISCLAIMER

The use of the word ‘Paki’ in this thread, and the name ‘Wes’ are both for theatrical and artistic purposes only.

Any similarity to a racist South Londoner called Wesley Bain is purely coincidental.