Is it still scouse?

Nothing is sacred any more is it? wait until you see what else we're working on over the year. Giant Gordal olives stuffed with Everton mints, a nice bitter twist ;-)

Nadia, did you once own a mobile cafe down at the docks? I am sure I heard that you regularly did Cock au vin in the back of a transit. I understand that you worked so hard all night serving the sailors that they nicknamed you 'Andropoff after one of your Presidents. I think the patrons who could afford a little extra fondly called you Marshall Zuckov? I know your batter is still the talk of Bootle.

In Russia we have stew which is speciality of Nadia and handed down from babushka while living in harsh northern wastes of Leningrad. I cook it for sailors also and to get best from seaman is best to squeeze beets hard before crushing them into large pot with special fish eye. I would like to meet restaurant owner like Peter Kinsella and teach him recipe from old country and many other secrets Nadia hold to breast.

Yes, you are right about Fritz Speigl and the "scouse" myth. He was an Austrian, a very amusing man, but in no way qualified to dissect the Liverpool dialect. His books were very embarrassing, even when reading them as a 14 year old

Neither have I Wapping, I think lobscouse is only ever used by people writing about people in Liverpool and "the way in what they all speak like lad" Peter Maloney and Fritz Spiegl (both very nice) contributed a lot to what I believe is largely a fiction about native liguistics. Although often entertaining at the time I seldom recognised many of the words and phrases both would put forward as being natural to Liverpudlians/politans (before anyone starts) Have I said all this before? Probably. But anyway My father and his brothers were probably as scouse as they come and I recall showing them the Learn Yerself Scouse book I got from Wilson's Bookshop in Church Alley (ahh fond memories) My Dad was laughing at the words and phrases although not in the way I expected, as he dismissed the majority of it as "a load of sh*te" He had never heard anyone use most of the alleged common words phrases and apart from the ill advised Keith Chegwin "comedy" The Whackers, neither he nor anyone I have ever met anyone that has ever heard the use ofthe word or refer to another person as whack or Wack. So on a similar thread and to return to your point....oh yes Lobby spuds, I doubt anybody has cooked a pan of lobscouse except on television and very few have cooked a pan of scouse, what they will have cooked is a pan of thick stew and employed the euphemism scouse.And another thing, while I am at it, traditional pasties made to the traditional cornish recipe that they try to flog us at stations, are tasteless rubbish. A gob full of sloppy swede (ooh Matron) I doubt anyone from Cornwall regularly eats such stuff. Give me one from Sayers any day. With CARROTS in it.

Ohh I got a bit tongue tied after I mentioned Chegwin, with my "met anyone" bit. Too much MSG and Guar Gum in my lobbed Scouse.

I was talking about scouse with my mum last year only a few days before she passed away aged nearly 80. She told me her aunt, who brought her up, used to say the scouse was ready when the potatoes went "all lobby", ie fell to mush. Mum had never heard the term lobscouse and although I have read of the word I've never heard it used.