In the 1970 movie Scrooge, Anton Rodgers sings the song “Thank You Very Much” that contains the lyric “If I had a bugle I would blow it/To add a sort of how’s your father touch.” You can see it here: - YouTube. The lyric is at 2:27. What’s a how’s your father touch?
It’s “add a kind of final vic’try touch.” We sang it in 9th grade choir.
NotherYinzer, the line you quote, “to add a kind of final vic’try touch” does appear in the song. However, that’s not the wording I’m puzzled by. The phrase I’m querying is “to add a sort of how’s your father touch.”
The lyrics are here: Thank You Very Much Lyrics - Scrooge Soundtrack Lyrics
That is so weird. We didn’t learn the lyrics about double dutch or having your flag out. We put on a Christmas musical using songs from Scrooge and I know those verses weren’t in there. Maybe we had an abridged version.
“How’s your father” is British slang for sex. What that has to do with blowing bugles, I have no idea, unless it’s a fellatio joke…
“How’s your father” means like “something something”.
Maybe to spice things up a bit? :dubious:
Have you never heard music, or maybe bells ring, when the big moment finally arrives? :o
Yes, maybe it means “to add a sexy touch”. “How’s your father” (or, commonly “a bit of how’s your father”) is very dated slang for sex; I have no idea what the origin might have been, but I also doubt whether anyone has used it in “real life” for many decades (it would have been very dated in vernacular use even in 1970), but that is what it means all right, and to all appearances it was once in used quite widely. The memory of it survives in old music hall songs, and the like. (I suppose the nearest American analogue would be “Who’s your daddy?”)
“How’s your father?” comes from old comedy, in an Alan Ayckbourn farce kind of way. cf “Ooh, Vicar!”
Basically, when you are about to address something “delicate” and “personal” you suddenly change the subject. That then got taken a little more literally as actually being part of the original sentence.
e.g: “So I’m having a bit of trouble with my, er, with my, er… my… So how’s your Father?” became “So I’m having a bit of trouble during how’s your Father.”
Interesting that “how’s your father” means sex. Thank you explaining this, Flywheel. That must be why the line was omitted from NotherYinzer’s school concert. The song was played at Anton Rodgers’s memorial service, which took place in a church. I wonder if the vicar knew the lyrics were slightly dicey?
Thanks for the explanation. I knew it had sexual overtones but would never have guessed at this explanation. I dont know if the phrase appears in Monty Python’s “Nudge, Nudge” sketch, but if it’s not it *should *be.
I remember the first Austin Powers movie, when he first meets Vanessa (Liz Hurley) and he’s asking her about sex, he says, “Do you like to wash up first, whores bath? Personally before I’m ‘on the job’ I like to give my undercarriage a bit of a ‘How’s Your Father.’”
I always took that to mean “extra clean?”
It was my impression that it meant ‘to add a slightly naughty, risque, or cheeky touch’
I think perhaps you are confusing Alan Aykbourn (a comic playwright, but not a farceur), with Brian Rix. I don’t know if Rix’s Whitehall Farces ever actually used the expression, but it is certainly more likely than that Ayckbourn would have used it in his rather literary comedies of modern middle-class manners.
Even Rix’s farces, however, although they are certainly “low comedy” compared to Ayckbourn, and set in a much earlier world, usually feature middle or upper-class characters, who would almost certainly have been far too posh to have used such an expression. A much more likely place to hear “how’s your father?”, would be the much more demotic comedy of the Carry On films. (Even in them, though, some of the comic effect of the phrase would probably have derived from its datedness).
I didn’t mean specifically Alan Ayckbourn, he was the only name I could bring to mind who did farcical “french doors” type comedy plays. The phrase itself probably pre-dates him by quite a ways.
The Carry On films are a much better example. I kept thinking of The Goons or Benny Hill (or Dick Emery or Dave Allen) but knew those weren’t right either.