Essex argot

Welcome to the land of the vajazzle. The stars of The Only Way is Essex might be stripping and flaunting their boob work in the pages of Now, OK and Heat, but the real star of the show is the language.

While street Londoners now speak Jafrican, here there’s a peculiar cock-er-ney merged with Ugly Betty Essex argot, babe, even if the young people here have never set foot in the East End, unlike Mark’s Nanny Pat and her sausage plait (an Essex culinary delight).

The vajazzle (crystals encrusted in the bikini line) is the most memorable addition to the English language as is the male version, a pejazzle. While “eyebrow technician” Amy sounds like she should be emerging from Thunderbirds’ Pod 4 to tackle the Hood’s Liam Gallagher-style monobrow.

From my own upbringing in Brentwood, where TOWIE is set, I recall such phrases as “well out of order”, referring to a perceived injustice and “the ‘ump”, aka the hump, referring to someone being annoyed.

However, a new mangling of the dialect emerged with a jealous Kirk asking Amy “Are you mugging me off?”, meaning are you treating me as a mug by chatting to other geezers.

Camp Harry has cornered the glottal-stop free “Shu’ up!" and Amy, who isn’t sure where north London is, loves “Oh my gawd!” and “Obviously!’, obviously.

While in the form of Mark Wright Carry On meets the possible son of Ian Dury in the form of phrases such as “you doughnut!”, “rotters” and the Essex greeting of “Oi! Oi!”,

It’s English, but “not no more” as we know it.

Made In Dagenham

Saw Made in Dagenham at the Romford Vue the other week. It’s been quite a year for Essex films. We’ve had Sex and Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll about Ian Dury and then Oil City Confidential, an excellent homage to Canvey Island and Dr Feelgood. Hollywood Romford indeed.

It’s a bit Carry On Striking at times and the young actresses are obviously more glamorous and sixties than their real-life counterparts. But Nigel Cole’s film tells a great story about the Ford strike for equal pay for women in 1967 and it’s astonishing that it was so recently that this basic right had to be fought for.

Sally Hawkins gives a fine performance as Rita O’Grady, a cipher for all the women who fought against the Labour government, Ford bosses and some of their male colleagues.

It’s also the only film to ever mention Warley, where the strikers’ had meetings with the Ford management. When I was growing up I thought it was simply called “Warleyfords”, as that’s what the bus stop was called.

On the way to Ford the corrupt union officials stop at a Berni Inn, then the height of sophistication. Indeed, Sugar Hut in Brentwood was once the White Hart, which was a Berni Inn with steak, chips, peas, mushrooms, Blue Nun, and not a vajazzle in height.

Made In Dagenham certainly makes you want to go and check out the Ford plant. Billy Bragg wrote the lyrics to the theme song too. You wonder if there’s a modern-day Bruce Springsteen or Eminem around ready to immortalize the land of motors, A roads and blue-collar life?

Dagenham — it’s the Detroit of Essex.

Irony in the soul

Nice to see irony alive on the Epping/Ongar hinterlands of Essex.

Driving down the A414 past Blakes Golf Club we saw signs advertising first spray-on tans and then functions with "a complimentary glass of white wine for the lady".

Al Murray's Pub Landlord would surely approve.

Hail Nanny Pat's Sausage Plait

The scripted dialogue of The Only Way is Essex might be ever more dire, but an unexpected star is Mark's Nanny Pat.

She's up for all Sugar Hut and Faces' events and keeps her self-styled "Mr Essex" grandson fortified with endless sausage plait.

By the end of the series it would be no surprise to see her singing with Lola, signing up for a vajazzle and starring in Essex Fashion Week.

Look Back in Ongar

“I can’t believe Ongar isn’t on the tourist trail,” says the Rev Susan Cooper of St Martin's Church in Chipping Ongar. “When I came here I thought it would be like Dagenham, but it’s a beautiful place.”

We detour to Chipping Ongar while taking the car club car to Bishops Stortford — and what a surprise the place is. It’s full of old Essex weatherboarded buildings, bulging medieval timbers and an ancient church and castle. Although being Essex it does have a beauty salon too.

We’ve stumbled into the church and found Mrs Vicarage on hand to give us the full Rev tour. She points out the 14th century roof timbers standing on stone corbels and an original Norman stained glass window by the altar.

She shows nine-year-old Nell the mysterious tiny hatch in the north wall of the sanctuary. This was for an anchorite cell attached to the church. Here a hermit could live without even an iPod, or if he got really bored open the small window to catch a bit of the service.

There’s a stained glass window commemorating the work of missionary David Livingstone — famed for meeting Stanley in Africa — whom it turns out trained in Ongar.

This early Norman church has brick and flint walls and a white weatherbarded tower with a weather vane perched on top. It’s utterly charming.

Near the church are old timber-beamed cottages with wobbly beams and floor levels.

We go into Grumpy George’s Old Fashioned Sweet Shop and discover low ceilings and more ancient supporting timbers. The building might be old but the young assistants have more modern preoccupations:

“Do you know how to do eyelash extensions?”

“Nah, but my mate does…”

We explore the mound of Ongar Castle, built in the tenth century by Richard de Lucy to compensate for having a girl’s name. There’s still a clear moat although the actual mound is fenced off. And on the far side where gardens run down to the moat it’s been refilled with water.

The footpath from the castle emerges at the Ecclesiastical Church where a plaque marks the room where David Livingstone studied, and a palm tree and blue walls in the evening sun make it seem a little like Livingstone’s Africa. And to top it all you can see the mast of Kelvedon Hatch’s Secret Nuclear Bunker in the distance.

How could I have been brought up in Brentwood but never looked back in Ongar? It’s even got a railway museum where the old tube line ended. London Underground’s loss has been Essex’s gain.

The worst address in England?

Who could have guessed that my old manor of Brentwood would one day appear in lights in the Sunday Telegraph? even if it is described as the worst place to live in England.

In today’s Sunday Telegraph here’s a Hollywood-style Brentwood sign above caricatures of the stars of The Only Way Is Essex alongside the headline “The worst address in England”?” . The ST continues that “Britain’s most maligned county is back — as the set of a TV reality show”.

William Langley’s feature reveals that the Essex Women’s Advisory Group, set up to counter the Essex girl stereotype, is particularly upset by the partially-scripted docusoap. “We’ve got businesses in Essex that can’t attract staff because women feel uncomfortable saying they come from here,” says Daphne Field of the EWAG. (Presumably not an acronym for Essex Wives and Girlfriends?)

Essex County Council claims the show has undone all its good work and numerous Facebook groups have been set up by outraged locals to protest about the Brentwood blingers.

But for all the ire, the first show attracted a stonking two million viewers, reveals the ST. And there’s even a nice piece of philosophy from Kirk: “I’d rather be hated for what I am than who I’m not.”

Meanwhile I’m quoted as “A seasoned chronicler of Essex Life”. Which is about as good as it gets; best go out and buy a £3000 watch and celebrate in the Sugar Hut right now.

Is This The Only Way in Essex?

The Only way is Essex aired on ITV2 on Sunday night and has certainly gone for every Essex stereotype available.

There’s more orange skin than you shake a tanning lamp at. Plus lots of pink beauty parlours, tattoos, gyms, lingerie shoots, BMWs, Frank Lampard look-alikes, £3000 watches, Mark’s East End Nan and the Sugar Hut nightclub in Brentwood. And best of all is Lauren having diamonds encrusted in her waxed bikini line in what is termed a “vajazzle”.

It’s lazy programming and unfair on the county that gave us Griff Rhys-Jones and John Fowles among others, but undeniably entertaining.

Really it’s the diary of a nightclub and you’d probably get much the same thing in Bolton, but minus Essex Girls saying “luverleey”.

My favourite bits included the rather nice and hopelessly lovelorn Kirk telling Amy that blokes will always chat her up because “you have fake boobs and you look really nice”. And when Lauren shows why it’s best not to tangle with the ladies of Essex, eyeing dodgy Mark with Sam and muttering “I’ll f**ing knock her out the door!”. Oh and there’s the gayest man in Essex in that pink beauty parlour to add to the entertainment.

You suspect some of the dialogue is set up for the cameras and you do wonder how they’ve all got so much dosh, but I have to admit I’ll be watching again this Sunday. Although the vajazzle (or whatever the male equivalent is - a pejazzle?) may have to wait.