Londoners needing to grab some sausage and mash (cash) from their rattle and tank (bank) when they’re out and about in the East End are now in luck. Cockney cash machines have been launched across the London district to celebrate the local lingo.
Bank Machine
Customers will be asked to enter their Huckleberry Flynn (PIN), and choose between options like: viewing their balance on the Charlie Sheen (screen) or taking out a speckled hen (£10).
If people find the slang language is making them use their loaf (head) a bit too much, they can switch back to plain old English, the makers the ATMs said in a press release.
“We wanted to introduce something fun and of local interest to our London machines … this is the first time a financial services provider will have recognized the cockney language in such a manner,” said Ron Delnevo, managing director of Bank Machine.
The Cockney option will be available on selected ATMs run by Bank Machine for the next three months.
Very few Londoners still use Cockney rhyming slang, but the practice has long caught the imagination of writers and filmmakers, from Charles Dickens’ ‘Oliver Twist’ to the popular UK soap opera EastEnders.
One bona fide Cockney told the BBC that the move was just a gimmick.
“Real Cockneys don’t have bank accounts or all that palava,” he said. “They put it under the mattress,” Roy Parker, 62, told the BBC while next to a Cockney cash machine in Hackney.