For Lynx users and those who simply can’t be arsed to read the comic themselves, the conversation goes:
“Bally! SNIVELSOME oatings, eh pipper?”
“Rather. Hairs on a bobbin, old bunt. Hairs on a bobbin.”
Would any of this actually mean anything in any English dialect, current or historical?
Nope. Well, all the words are actual words (except maybe “oatings”) but strung together there’s no actual sense there. It’s just a string of upper-class Brit-like words with a few random ones mixed in.
I figured that might be the case. What do those words mean? I can figure out what “rather” and “eh” mean, but do “bally”, “snivelsome” and “bunt” mean what they sound like from context? What about “bobbin”?
Translations:
Rather: Emphatic and enthusiastic affirmative Usually used in response to a question. eg “Kind of cold tonght isn’t it?” “Rather”.
Eh: Inquisitive form of “yes”. “Bit cold, eh?”
Bally: A bowdlerised form of “bloody”. Bloody itself is simply an intensifier and can be substituted with “very” or “great” with no great change in meaning. eg “It’s bally cold”, “You are a bally genius”. I’m not sure that anybody in real life ever said “Bally” but movies and TV used it a lot to get around censorship laws.
Snivelsome: Inclined to snivelling. Tending towards cowardice and whining.
Bunt: Popularised as an insult from a Monty Python spoonerism involving a character that pronounces all "C"s as "A"s. “What a silly bunt”.
Bobbin: A standard english word for the central spool in a roll of thread.
As you can see it’s total gibberish with an upper class sound.
I don’t think “snivelsome” is actually a word, although you can certainly imagine what it might mean. “Bunt”, I’ve never heard a British person use except perhaps baseball aficianados. “Bobbins”, they might have picked up from its recent use as an alternative to “useless” or “rubbish”, possibly as a jokey bowdlerisation of “bollocks” - “this comic strip is bobbins.”
Note that ‘bally’ in this sense is pronounced with ‘a’ as in apple, not ball, so that it sounds more like ‘bloody’ or ‘bladdy’.