From the UK series, “Keeping Up Appearances” you find Hyacinth always bragging about how rich her brother in law is, with his fancy house and room for a pony.
But she always proudly states he’s a turf accountant. I didn’t know that term before I watched the series so I looked it up and it’s a bookie.
Now I was thinking Hyacinth used the term instead of bookie to give Bruce, her bother-in-law, more class, but it seems everyone in England would know that turf accountant is just a euphemism for bookie, so what’s the point?
But then I was thinking that Hyacinth may not know this as she’s not one to catch on how people go to great lengths to avoid her, among other things.
Or is it that simply that the profession of bookmaker is more dignified than in the USA. I saw in Wikipedia, that bookmaking wasn’t legal till after 1994, when the National Lottery in the UK was adopted.
I don’t think she could fail to know. There are “Turf Accountant” shops, marked as such, all over the place in Britain.
Bookmaking (under license) has been legal in Britain for a lot longer than what you suggest, and there have been “Turf Accountant” shops around at least since the 1960s. Most people just call them betting shops, though.
On the one hand, because it has long been legal and well regulated, the profession of bookie probably does not have quite as seedy an image in Britain as it does in the USA, but it still has a pretty seedy air to it, and in reality almost everyone refers to them as “bookies” (or at best, refers to their establishments as “betting shops”), not “turf accountants”.
But that is the point of the joke. “Turf Accountant” is a euphemism that bookies would like you to use, and that they push by putting it on their signs and business papers etc., because they want to make you think that they are more respectable than most people believe them to be. But almost no-one buys into it. Hyacinth, however is a huge and very transparent snob, and, ineptly, tries to imply that her brother in law is a very respectable turf accountant ( a term transparently invented to make bookies sound posh and respectable), rather than the relatively seedy bookie that everyone else knows him (and all other self-styled turf accountants) to be. It is funny (to the extent that it is - frankly I don’t much like the show) because Hyacinth is so obviously deceiving herself, and failing to deceive anybody else.
It would appear that bookies do not move in the best society, at least according to the Brit detective series Midsomer Murders. In “Market for Murder,” a 2002 episode, a village grande dame repeatedly snubs the local doctor’s wife, speaking to her in an odiously condescending manner and refusing to invite her to parties. The doc’s wife’s crime? She’s the daughter of a turf accountant. The old bat, I was pleased to note, came to a sticky end.
Yep, at least in some of the episodes. Violet seems to always give Hyacinth a call when Bruce is wearing her stuff.
At least Bruce & Violet have room for a pony, along with a lot of other posh stuff, so I guess Turf Accounting, as least in the Apperances-verse, pays very well indeed.
(And it took me way too long to work out that the 4 sisters, Hyacinth, Rose, Daisy, and Violet, are all named after flowers…)