Cor blimey guv'nor, cockney cash machines?

[luke]

Cor blimey guv'nor, cockney cash machines? You're 'avin a giraffe!
If the rhyming slang ATMs are a hit, next up could be Brummie, Geordie and Scouse. Genius, or a load of Watford Gap?


A cockney cash machine on Commercial Street, close to Spitalfields market in east

Feeling brassic? Run out of bees? Don't worry, help is at hand. Take your Jimmy Shands out of your Davey, and take a bowl of chalk to one of five cash dispensers in east London where, thanks to a new range of cockney cash machines, you can withdraw some Crosby, Stills and Nash.

Or, for those of you not fluent in David Hockney: Bank Machine, which runs 2,500 ATMs across the country, has set up five cash dispensers in locations from Spittalfields to Barnet that offer customers the option either to request cash in English, or "moolah for ya sky rocket" in cockney.

Ask for cockney and the machine tells you it is "Readin' your bladder of lard" before asking for your "Huckleberry Finn". Then the hard decisions start. Do you want to see your balance on the Charlie Sheen? Or withdraw sausage and mash?

If the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang cash machines are a success, the company hopes to follow them up with Brummie, Geordie, Scouse and Scots ATMs (suggestions for these much welcomed – the British Library's Sounds Familiar website, which tracks accents and dialects, was not a huge amount of help in coming up with the Brummie for cash).

It is not simply about client satisfaction, says the company – and anyway, anyone who claims there are more than a brass band full of pure-bred cockneys in trendy Spitalfields is having a giraffe. Its laudable aim is to keep dialects alive in Britain.

Genius, or a load of Watford Gap? Well, the company gets a bit of publicity, its users a bit of a bubble bath. Surely, everyone's a chicken dinner?

from http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2009/aug/25/cockney-cash-machines

i wonder if it'll tell me i'm murray mint ?

[faceless]

Aren't these the machines that charge you £2 or something to withdraw? They've been 'avin a giraffe for too long already!

[SpursFan1902]

Are they affiliated with a bank or just freestanding ATM's, like Presto machines here in the Southeast US? I think it is a great idea for preserving the culture of an area, especially one so tied to it's slang like the East End. I can't wait to use one to see if I can figure it out...

[TheCaptain]

The company usually charges £1.50 per transaction (bastards!) but the Cockney machines are free.

@SpursFan: we really don't need anybody to help us preserve our culture. It's more of a problem to stop our accent and language infecting the rest of you. But if you can work out a Cockney dialect, congratulations! You're probably the first Spurs fan in history that managed that!