"Eee, it's right taters out there".
Derivation: (Yokel accent) "Arrrrr, there'll be a frost on yer taters tonight".I always understood that "taters" came from Cockney rhyming slang "taters in the mold"=cold. "'taters"=
Hippo*potatoes and "mold"= (in this context) soil or a heaped bank of soil, good for growing and pulling new potatoes, but before this descends (or ascends depending on your life view) into a food thread I move on to:
Last night's Who Wants to be a Millionaire had a question on "Which biblical character is the name of a shark in Australia?". I worked out it was probably Noah from rhyming slang - Noah's Ark = Shark which was correct. Which in turn leads to:
The same program started with a recall. A few months previously, a guy had been on £32,000 (GBP) which is a guarantee point in UK. His £64,000 question was: "What was Richard Sheridan's middle name?" and from (for example) Brinsley, Burroughs, Barnaby, Butler he guessed (nothing to lose) Butler. The computer said incorrect, should have chosen Brinsley and he went away happy with 32K. But, (as WE all know, right?) Sheridan also had a middle name of Butler. Several viewers pointed this out so he was recalled, starting at 64K. He then refused to answer the next question and went home with 64K.
*To follow up on paulb's mention of Flanders and Swann (on which I was raised) you might like to look at:
http://sniff.numachi.com/~rickheit/dtrad/lookup.cgi?ti=GLORIMUD&tt=GLORIMUD
