FishonaBike mentions an absolute shambles as being a cock-up

Hi MG (incidentally known as a sports car over this side of the pond )

Actually it was alexis who first mentioned cock-ups, but as I said regarding shambles, there are more similarities than differences between Aussie and Brit slang.

We also talk about balls-ups and ballsing things up, which certainly makes it look like we're talking male genitalia .

However, both expressions are used in a fairly colloquial, easy-going sense (nothing like f*-up) which argues against their origin being solely vulgar.

Old thread to the rescue on cock-ups:
http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=wordplay&Number=28988
- in which Bingley points us to:
http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-coc1.htm

I also just found an excellent reference for English to American slang translation:
http://english2american.com/dictionary/cats/expletives.html
More practical and individualistic than academic, but maybe that's not a bad thing

I know it seems like a cop-out (and there's another unusual bit of Brit slang, probably) to throw in lots of links, but they're all worth following, honest!

Fisk