Before 1967, gay men invented a 'secret code' to talk freely in public. People still use it today
Polari was mostly used by 'lesbians, female impersonators, theatre people, sea-queens,' and straight people who were connected to the theatre
Before homosexuality was decriminalized in the UK in 1967, gay men often couldn't speak openly about their identities in public. To communicate safely and recognize one another, many turned to a coded language called Polari — a secret vocabulary whose influence can still be heard today. On June 7, 2026, in an Instagram video on Paul Carrick Brunson (@needtotalk)’s podcast, "I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here" star Tom Read Wilson talked more about the language that gay men used to express themselves before the decriminalization era.
The lost language of gay men
Wilson recalled being in the jungle on the show when musician and fellow contestant Martin Kemp greeted him with the phrase, "Bona lallies, Tom." Wilson revealed that the coded phrase means “great legs.” Wilson revealed that Kemp, too, can speak Polari and is “fascinating.” Introducing the language to the reality star, Kemp told him that he grew up listening to BBC Radio’s “Round the Horne,” which features the characters Julian and Sandy who talk in this language.
'You could be who you wanted to be'
Wilson, who is openly gay, shared that they joined a club called Blitz, where there was no gender and no orientation. They just called themselves New Romantics. “Your sexuality — you could be who you wanted to be. In that club, there were boys kissing boys and girls kissing girls, and no one blinked an eyelid,” he explained to Brunson. “That is something that I took with me, and I have handed down to my kids to say you accept people for who they are,” Wilson shared with Brunson, and added, “And that, that is one of the loveliest things I think about being involved in that whole pop culture when I was a kid."
Most popular 'lavender language'
According to Paul Baker, who wrote "Polari — The Lost Language of Gay Men," Polari is a language of “fast put-downs, ironic self-parody, and theatrical exaggeration.” In the pre-1960s, if a gay person called the police, the police would arrest them, focusing on their homosexuality rather than the crime, per the BBC. That's why Polari, a “lavender language,” as HISTORY calls it, was invented as a way of protection and secrecy for gay men whilst excluding outsiders who didn’t grasp homosexuality. According to Lancaster.ac.UK, Polari was mostly used by “lesbians, female impersonators, theater people, sea-queens,” and straight people who were connected to the theater.
Mishmash of dozens of languages
After the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1967, Polari gradually disappeared from common parlance but is still spoken in some places. It is a melange of Italian, Romani, Yiddish, Cockney rhyming slang, backslang, and cant, a language used by 18th-century traveling performers, criminals, and carnival artists.
A popular example of the language is the phrase “vada a chicken’s dolly eek,” which translates to “look at (vada) a pretty face (dolly eek) young guy (chicken).” In Polari, hair becomes “riah,” house becomes “lattie,” face becomes “eek,” and glasses become “oglefakes." In 2015, Karl Eccleston and Brian Fairbairn also produced a film called "Putting on the Dish," in which the characters speak in Polari. David Bowie's song "Girl Loves Me" also contains lyrics partly written in the Polari language.
'Betty Bangles' and 'Lily Law'
The video was met with warm reactions from the viewers, with most of them appreciating Wilson’s accent and the way he is as a person. Others quoted phrases from the Polari language. @judea_n_samaria wrote, “Betty Bangles,” a phrase that translates to a “police woman” in Polari. @justagaykay recounted, “Polari was my favorite pastime to learn about in college when I worked the library's front desk.”
You can follow Paul Carrick Brunson (@needtotalk) on Instagram for more inspiring, informative, and wholesome content.
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