Dolly birds...

It looks like I’m stuck in one of my nostalgia loops, so if you were expecting deep and meaningful today then I apologise to you now. After my Tupperware post and a comment about dolly birds I couldn’t stop myself wondering about where the term came from. Just who first called some young lady a ‘dolly bird’ and what did he mean by it? It was obviously a man, and a bit of a lad too – you know the sort: wink, wink, nudge, nudge, ‘bit of a goer is she sir?’

I was hoping that maybe my old friend Billy Shakespeare had dreamt the term up to give it a bit of gravitas; something like:

“Forsooth fair shrew thou lay in faith, both bonny and dull; perchance liken to the dolly bird on wing. Away thee maid, I’m for some fair and well flung land.”

If not Will, then maybe those old dolly trucks that were used by the jolly dolly barrow boys of Smithfield Market as they brought in the live geese for Christmas slaughter – ‘Gert yer lovely Gooses ‘ere!’

No? Then perhaps it was an Edwardian wind-up tin toy from the Kaiser’s Germany – a parrot with a baby’s head which sang and cried alternately – waaaaa – tweet – waaaa- tweet  (No stop! I’ll have nightmares).

What about a sixties BBC TV camera woman (not that there were any, the unions saw to that) – a camera dolly bird?

As it turned out it was none of these things. All I could find by way of a definition was: ‘a woman who is considered attractive and fashionable but not very clever’. What, ‘not very clever’? Well I didn’t know about the ‘not very clever’ bit Ms Vorderman, I just thought that dolly birds were a bit ‘cor’ and even a bit more Leslie Phillips ‘I say’. Apparently, the phrase was first used back in 1964.

Quote: ‘back in the swinging '60s she was one of London's most celebrated dolly birds’.

But I couldn’t find out where, who first used it and who they were talking about. How do these things spring into existence? Where do they come from? How do they get into our consciousnessessess’s?

All questions that I couldn’t answer (and one that I couldn’t even pronounce), but it did get me thinking about dolly birds – as if I needed any encouragement.

They were definitely around in the sixties; every girl David Bailey photographed became one – even Twiggy. But for me it had to be ‘The Liver Birds’. Well, Nerys Hughes actually. Yes, Nerys Hughes was quite a lot of dolly bird for a boy just into his sweaty teens. For a while I had a serious thing for her, it wasn’t reciprocated though; that’s the thing with the Television; it isn’t the best vehicle for a meaningful two-way relationship.

Ah, the Liver Birds. If you don’t remember the classic Carla Laine series it charted the ups and downs of two 'Dolly Birds' sharing a tiny flat in Liverpool in the seventies. Beryl and Sandra dressed in the latest fashions; two young women making their way in a wonderful world of seventies sexism, bum pinching, kipper ties, and temporary secretarial work in cigarette smoke filled offices.

Yes, Nerys was my dolly bird for quite a while until Sally Thomsett and Paula Wilcox came along… and then Joanna Lumley... and then Carol Vorderman… and then Caroline Quentin… and then Holly Willoughby…

Dolly Birds – every man should have one or two (if you know what I mean - wink, wink).