Ever heard expression “on your tod”?
It means to be, or do something, on your own, without help.
As in: “He stood guard all night, on his tod.”
Ever wondered where it came from?
Well all you have to do is look it up in any of the various books on cockney rhyming slang.
There are several in Foyles.
All written by 30-ish middle class university graduates.
All of whom are experts in the derivation of cockney rhyming slang.
So to them, all slang must be rhyming slang.
Rhyming slang is where you leave the second part of the rhyme off.
So, if we go a bit Dick van Dyke for a moment, “apples” means stairs, because the full rhyme is “apples and pears”.
So in seeking the derivation of ‘tod’ they know it must be the first part of the rhyme.
And the second part must rhyme with (on your) “own”.
So they’ll tell you that ‘on your tod’ is believed to refer to a certain Todd Sloan, a man famous in the east end of London for riding around everyday, alone on his horse.
He liked to be alone.
Hence ‘todd sloan’ = alone.
Except that’s bollocks.
These people assume that all slang is derived from rhyming slang because that’s their preconception.
So they make the evidence fit their preconception.
The truth is ‘on your tod’ isn’t rhyming slang at all.
I know, I was there.
It started with Elizabeth Taylor.
She married a Hollywood producer called Mike Todd.
He wanted to make the film “Around The World In Eighty Days” starring David Niven.
It cost an absolute fortune and he couldn’t get any backing.
At the time it was a famous story, how he scraped, and did whatever it took, to finance the film.
Against the odds he got it made, and it was a huge success.
In those days the biggest TV programme was “Sunday Night At The London Palladium”.
The host at this particular time was Norman Vaughan.
He used to do a brief monologue at the beginning of the show.
One Sunday night he was grumbling that he’d had no help that evening.
“I’ve had to do everything on my Mike Todd” he said.
It got a huge laugh.
Because everyone knew what he meant without saying it.
The phrase “on your Mike Todd” caught on.
Soon it got shortened to “on your Todd” and eventually “on your tod”.
And it passed into the language.
Now anyone who wasn’t there at the time, to watch TV on that Sunday night, obviously won’t remember that.
So they’ll recreate it from the tools they’ve got.
And, as they say, if the only tool you’ve got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
Or as Werner Heisenberg put it:
“What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”
It’s the same way with ads as everything else.
We each have a preconception about what works and we can each put up a good argument.
Who wins?
Whoever makes the best argument.
But, as Tim Delaney once said to me, “Yes, but that doesn’t make them right, just because they won the argument.”
That’s why an argument about ads is really kind of futile.
All that wins is the best argument, not necessarily the best ad.
Think of that next time you’re on an awards jury, or with a client, or an account man or planner, or even your creative partner.
Someone might be better at arguing.
They might win the argument.
But they might still come up with the wrong answer
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Did you know that Che Guevara was a bit grumpy because everytime he put forward a successful argument his clan would respond touché Che?
Well that’s the only explanation for some (or most!) of the ads that make it ‘out there’ - they were backed by a superior arguer!
I got one of those ‘toilet books’ for christmas - supposedly telling the fascinating story behind everyday phrases. ‘Etymology’ I believe they call it.
Anyway, after about 5 pages I realised that it was all bollocks.
david
does that mean that when i lost all those arguments with tim delaney i was right all the time?
john o’d
John,
You’re a brave man to even argue with Tim Delaney.
It reminds me of what Tim Lindsay said about arguing with Frank Lowe.
He said he and 3 others went into Frank’s office to make him change his mind.
Ten minutes later they came out with their tails between their legs.
Someone asked them how it went and they said, “He ganged up on us.”
Dave
Suddenly I feel kind of stupid - the previous post about copy and writers.
Dave,
I remember all those arguments John O’D
had with Tim.
Tim wasn’t even in the room.
Ciaran
When arguing strike at the same bruise on your opponent time after time.
Page 12 I wish I was the person I’m pretending to be
The mistake most people make is that it is more important for them to be seen to win an argument rather than actually winning the argument.
http://thebasildonbloggerstrikesagain.com/
When arguing try to tell the truth but don’t let it rob you of victory.
The little book of eternal suffering (Not yet published)
http://thebasildonbloggerstrikesagain.com/
I’m afraid I find the last three posts extremely rude.
Rather like being invited to dinner at someone’s home
and then proceeding to try to sell something to the
other guests.
Ciaran
Table manners never were my thing.
Anyway I was simply referencing my sources. An honesty left over from academic life. I favour the Harvard method. Ah but if you haven’t been to university you wouldn’t understand how important it is to do this.
We are all too aware that stating the obvious,
ad nauseum, is your thing.
Ciaran
The mistake most people make is that it is more important for them to be seen to win an argument rather than actually winning the argument.
I don’t know if any of you read James Taranto’s daily political column in the WSJ – I’d recommend it – but I was reminded of something he mentioned last week with Dave’s post here on the art of the argument.
In a Friday item, we observed that in symbolic logic, a false premise implies anything. That is, “if P then Q” is true, regardless of the value of Q, any time P is false. In real life, a conditional statement often is an evaluation of probability rather than a binary proposition. But when the premise is an unrealistically false hope, the effect is the same.
This is true, but it was irrelevant to the statements we discussed in that item, which were of the form “only if P, then Q.” Such statements can be false if P is false. Logically, the statement “only if P, then Q” is the equivalent to “if Q, then P.” Thus, it is true any time the conclusion is false.
Examples:
o If pigs can fly, the pope is Catholic. True.
o If pigs can fly, the pope is agnostic. True, since pigs cannot fly.
o Only if pigs can fly, the pope is Catholic. False. The pope is Catholic notwithstanding pigs’ flightlessness.
o Only if pigs can fly, the pope is agnostic. True.
Good story Dave, I shall steal it, re-tell, and unlike Harvard Jack here I will not reference.
Great point, but to play devils advocate, isn’t saying that someone might win because they can argue their point better a little like saying they might win because they can communicate better or write better or art direct better?
Aren’t these things a very large part of advertising?
Thanks Michael. Wikipedia is amazing isn’t it? It’s the italics gives it away. I’ve done the same with Derrida.
Ben. Try to concentrate.
Hi Ben,
That’s exactly the point.
Someone can win because they communicate, persuade, argue better.
And, of course, that’s exactly what we do.
That’s how Bernbach could make VW outsell other cars, by making a better argument.
Most of the time our products are no better, so we have to use creativity.
We may win, but that doesn’t make the product better.
Like winning an argument doesn’t make someone right, it just means they win.
The ability to seperate the two in our mind gives us the power of objectivity.
“It’s never about right or wrong. It’s about winning or losing.”
Heyo Dave
I read lots of books on trivia.
Almost each claims the average person will swallow/eat (accidentally) 10 spiders while sleeping.
Turns out this is a load of hogwash.
Seems some guy put that fact up on the net, to see how far it would spread.
Just thought you’d be interested.
Robin, speaking of unresearched trivia: I had a boss who fancied himself as a motivational guru and master of neuro-linguistics - he even had certificates to prove it. One of his favourite sayings was that we all “use only 10% of our brain”. He claimed this was a scientifically proven fact. But he was never able to tell me which 10%…
i remember ed’s very effective version of arguing. being surprisingly loud and passionate and logical and right. it took a brave soul to counter that. but as you point out it didn’t mean he was always right. just most of the time.
As the great Brodrick Crawford used to say at the end of Dragnet. ‘Remember when driving, it’s not who’s right, it’s who’s left.’ There’s nothing in my book, Words are not things, that comes close.
The trouble with arguing is the scariest person often wins. I believe Hitler was quite good at it.
Rachel,
Back to John O.D’s point about Tim Delaney, and Vinnie Warren’s about Ed McCabe.
Now an argument between Tim delaney and Hitler?
I’d pay to see that.
Conor,
If your guru boss took the 10% of his brain he was using from the 90% he was not,
surely his conclusion can only be an assumption based on his brain only being 10% efficient. The brain MAY only use 10% for thought, it has many other functions to deal with: maintaining homeostasis, proprioception, visual processing, musculo-skeletal motor movements, dealing with manufacturing its own drugs to deal with diseases, hunger, emotional pain, ego, self will, other poeple’s will, audio, linguistics, making sense of the illogical, and that’s all without having to deal with people like Jack !!!! Our brains are a fantastic.
I’d always argue:
Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?…..
I know which I’d rather be.
And I’d pay not to see that, Dave.
Ha
Some politicians in some parts of the world you cannot argue you.
They get their lawyers to go through everything you say.
Then before you know it, you’re down a million quid in damages.
The late Johnnie Mortimer (him of the Rumpole series) made a good living defending folks who argued with politicians in other parts of the world.
Ahh, i see. Nice one.
On the subject of Hitler’s ability to argue; somebody once told me of a very interesting Hitler quote, went something like…
“People will believe a big lie sooner than they will believe a little one.”
Oddly enough, I think this is probably true.
Back to your orginal point David.
It’s a shame about the Todd Sloane story.
I wanted to believe it.
It’s much more interesting, if sad story.
More intriguing than a nasty Hollywood producer trying to raise money for a movie.
I wanted to know why Todd rode around all on his ‘tod’. (sorry.)
Did todd have no friends?
Was he seaching for a loved on?
Was he lost?
Did the poor bugger have no where to go during the day?
He didn’t know how to get his horse to stop?
Ummm.
Are your sure your right about Todd Sloane?
Where did you read it wasn’t true?
As sometimes, just because it’s in a book, its not always true.
jo’d
P.S. One day i’ll tell the story about when i went to throw Tim out his office window. I wait until it’s relevant.
John,
A fight between you and Tim Delaney? Sounds like it must have been a St Patrick’s day when ‘The Murphia’ used to congregate: John O’Driscoll, John Kelly, John O’Donell.
No fight. Tim doesn’t do fight. He only does argue.
Be patient. Its a good’un and it will be relevant to one of your fine blogs i’m sure.
Now Ciaren did ‘fights’. But usually lost to my knowledge. I saw his balls to prove it. BIGGG!!! (Johnny Marles fault.)
jo’d
Gordon reckons it must have been BBDO.
I always loved that agency ever since I went to a Christmas party there as a junior, and Deep Throat was playing on all the monitors in the agency.
http://ex-blank-page.blogspot.com/2009/06/in-reply-to-daves-great-posts-53.html
Anca, what do you do?
Dave,
Rather sad to see John O’D’s memory starting to resemble that of George Lois, he can’t even spell the name of one of his best friends correctly. To set the record straight, I didn’t do fights and here is an accurate recounting of the night to which he refers.
I had returned from New York to London on a visit and a friend threw a small cocktail party. After one or two drinks we repaired for dinner to September on the Earl’s Court Road. During the first course, John Marles fell into his soup muttering “I only want to find a fucking fish.” In an act of extreme kindness I decided to escort John home. I left the restaurant propping John up all the while. As John stepped out onto the Erl’s Court Road a speeding car almost hit him. Showing amazing presence of mind I whipped John back on to the pavement while simultaneously leveling a swift kick to the side of the speeding car. I then proceeded across the road only to hear a very loud braking noise. Suddenly I was confronted by a rather large gentleman bent on inflicting pain. Quickly springing into action, I threw my bespectacled face at his fist and hurled my testicles at his booted foot, ending up on my back on the Earl’s Court road with a bemused John Marles inquiring “Are you alright?” Rising gamely to my feet I drove John home in his brand new BMW (courtesy of RSA, a small production house he had just joined). Richard Foster and Terry Bunton being present can verify this story and lay bare O’D’s pathetic falsehoods. The next day I lunched at The Reform Club with a good friend, David Bryans. They were kind enough to supply a couple of goose-down cushions to help me avoid eating while standing up.
I tried to interest both Ridley and Tony into making a modest budget thriller out of the incident, but to no avail.
Ciaran
@Ben
Anything that starts with 99% chances of failure.
yeah, I want to hold onto the Todd Sloan story too. Since he lived in the nineteenth century, surely there would be recorded uses of the expression ‘on your tod’ from many years before Elizabeth Taylor? Dave may be right to disdain the ‘30-ish middle class university graduates’ but etymology is supposed to be evidence-based. If these linguists are simply going on conjecture then it’s because they are not doing their jobs properly, not because they are middle class.
Just because it’s written in a blog it doesn’t have to be true.
For the record.
I couldn’t never spell Ciaran’s name. No one can.
John Marles actually said “All I want to do is CATCH a fucking” fish”. This was reference to a conversation he was having with the said David Bryans, who was a bit of an expert fly fisherman and had just politely resisted Johnny M’s drunken request to join him in a fishing expedition.
I have no recollection of Richard Foster or Terry Bunton at the dinner. That could be the drink.
Actually I did lie. I didn’t see Ciaran’s enlarged testicles. But guessed they were big by the way he was walking.
‘I didn’t do fights’ No, Ciaran starts them. I just like to remind my dear friend of the evening in the Limerick yacht club when, while masquerading as a priest on vacation from the states, he nearly had me beaten up by an irate husband HE’D told to fuck off.
But one thing is completely accurate David.
Ciaran did get a kicking that night and his fellow diners thoroughly appreciated it, for when he came back to the restaurant and told us what had just happen to him we pissed ourselves laughing.
J O’D
“I couldn’t never spell …”
Got that right.
Fucking art directors.
Ciaran
Rob.
George Orwell said that what seperated English from the dead languages, like Latin or even French, was that English was constantly being refreshed from below, while they were cast in stone and couldn’t be altered.
Slang, nowadays mainly black American, is what’s kept English changing and alive and adaptable to countries and cultures anywhere in the world.
What I dislike is academics insisting that all slang must be rooted in the past, I love it constantly changing.
Nowadays a £10 note is an ‘Ayrton’ (short for Ayrton Senna).
It’s a creative language, I like it when peoole play with it. That’s why I like The Sun.
Orwell surely would have said “separate.”
Fucking copywriters.
Ciaran
Ciaran,
Are you Latin or French?
French quarter, bog Latin.
Ciaran
well cheers to that.
The humanities are in a state because they don’t allow linguistic innovation.
Wittgenstein wrote: ‘The limits of my thought are the limits of my language’. But a young Wittgenstein, if he stayed in academe, would get beaten into shape and quickly lose the flexibility of language needed to think what he did.