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Return of the Treadi.Goo-nies II, Sole Survivors
It had a certain currency, but not much.The alliterative nature of the 'bovver boy' moniker suggests it's a tabloid newspaper construct like 'lager lout'.
In the late 60s there was a brief attempt by the fashion biz to bring in a "turtle" neck shirt (i.e. in shirt material) with a chunky brooch instead of a tie. It didn't really catch on - a handful of uptown peacocks might have taken it up - but I did see one customer at the Savoy Rooms in Catford wearing such a shirt with a brooch. That would have been second half of 1968, shortly after I arrived down in London. He was wearing it with a standard peanut suit. I saw no one else with one.Just had a snoop around online - do you mean like mock turtle necks? Crew necks that have a higher stand to the ‘collar’ (head opening!) but not enough to fold over?
I heard the terms "totter," "bovver boy," "aggro boy," "boot boy," and "John boy" being used in London about skinheads during the skinhead era. Of those terms "totter" was a term some of us/them used when "mod" was falling out of use, and was adopted because inner-city London kids would collect scrap to sell (a practice known as "totting" - the term "totter" had been synonymous with rag & bone men); "boot boy" was taken up; "John boy" was generally used by non-skins taking the Mickey out of the London accent and the practice of calling anyone you didn't know "John."* One of my girlfriends at college said to me "You're a John boy!"I'm not sure when I first heard 'bovver boys'. When I was about six in the early seventies, boys a couple of years older would complain that the local play area had been occupied by 'skinheads' and I _think_ they may also have called them bovver boys. I should think they were probably just kids who were may not even have been in their teens. I always associated them with baseball boots rather than proper boots, which may be a clue.
https://wordhistories.net/2022/03/10/bovverboy-skinhead/ says bovver boots and bovver boy both crop up in 1969. Interesting that two of the citations are in Midlands* newspapers, though journalists will pick up on words coined elsewhere. It does mean that the phrase had at least been introduced into my local area.
I'd forgotten that Dick Emery's character was called Screwsby the Bovver Boy though I don't know when he appeared or even if the phrase was actually used in the show.
*(The Midlands are, of course, 'oop north' to Londoners and 'darn sarf' to anyone north of about Sheffield. The 'th' sound has long been a bit of an optional extra round my neck of the woods)
😬😬😬I bet it was Sid James’s ghost seeing off the bands at the Sunderland Empire.
Snorkel Parka in navy blue, actually. Although the misidentification is where we got the term anorak (for a nerd or enthusiast) from.Missing the anorak, notepad, thermos flask and camera.