English Dopers: Explain this, please:

[Rayne_Man]

@Eolbo

And retrieved from the entirely useless collection of trivia that is my brain the following. After the Falklands war soldiers from the British garrison left on the islands to prevent a repetition found the locals unsophisticated bumpkins and called them ‘bennies’. This was officially forbidden in order to maintain good relations with the native population. So soldiers started to call them ‘stills’. As in still bennies.

I suppose this was derived from the Crossroads Benny, who certainly wasn’t gay but was a bumpkin.

[Hal_Briston]

Ahh, okiee…that line always threw me. Here on the Jersey shore, “benny” is a local colloquialism for “Tourist from North Jersey or New York”. I always wondered what Gareth’s meaning for it was.