Many celebrities were not amused when, in 2002, an updated list of Cockney constructions appeared in the Oxford Dictionary of Rhyming Slang.
Among the volume's 3,000 entries? 'Emma Freuds' -- which had officially joined (soccer player) 'Nobby Styles' and 'Farmer Giles' and as a variant of 'hemorrhoids' or 'piles'.
[Among the Dictionary's less insulting celebrity rhymes:
George Raft (Draft),
Calvin Klein (wine),
Tony Blairs (flares or pants),
Laurel and Hardy (Bacardi),
Camilla Parker-Bowles (Rolls),
Lee Marvin (starving),
Colonel Gadafy (coffee or cafe),
Michael Caine (pain),
Cilla Black (back),
and Steffi Graf (laugh),
Claire Rayners (trainers),
Selina Scotts (spots),
Alan Whickers (knickers),
Billy Smart (fart),
and
Jimmy Logie (a mid-20th century Arsenal soccer player: bogie)]
[Cockney rhyming slang was first mentioned in a dictionary from 1859: "The cant is known in Seven Dials [a famous central London den of iniquity] as the Rhyming Slang, or the substitution of words and sentences which rhyme with other words intended to be kept secret." Such slang featured prominently in such Cockney television dramas and comedies as "Minder" and "Only Fools and Horses" and in such films as The Limey and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.]
Sources
The Guardian, October 7, 2002
