Bob's your uncle

[Doug Millison]

I don't recall the context now, but it seems to me there was some
discussion a while back about the phrase "Bob's your uncle"?

Anyway, this was in a recent issue of World Wide Words, an email newsletter
from http://www.quinion.demon.co.uk/words/

Q. What is the origin of 'bob's your uncle'? [Florence C Goold]
A. This is another of those catchphrases which seem to arise out
of nowhere and have a period of fashion, in this case quite a long
one. We know that it began to be used in the 1880s in Britain. One
theory has it that it derives from the slang phrase 'all is bob',
meaning "all is safe". But there have been several slang
expressions containing the word 'bob', some associated with
thievery or gambling, and around this time it was also a common
generic name for somebody you didn't know. The most attractive
theory is that it derives from a prolonged act of political
nepotism. The prime minister Lord Salisbury (family name Robert
Cecil, pronounced /'sIsIl/) appointed his rather less than popular
nephew Arthur Balfour (later himself to be PM from 1902-11) to a
succession of posts. The first in 1887 was chief secretary of
Ireland, a post for which Balfour was considered unsuitable. The
consensus among the irreverent in Britain was that to have Bob as
your uncle guaranteed success, hence the expression and the sense
it preserves of something that is easy to achieve.


D O U G  M I L L I S O N  [http://www.online-journalist.com]
"Life: a spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay."
      --Ambrose Bierce