Polari flourished in the difficult years between the trial of Oscar Wilde and the 1967 Sexual Offences Act. It was a kind of code, which enabled one gay man to identify another, allowed them to express themselves publicly without fear of arrest or reprisal and provided a vocabulary for talking about gay sex and sexuality.

Glossary: troll back, to return; nish, no more; aunt nells, ears; naff, straight, tasteless; ogle, eye; dolly, nice, pleasant; eek , face - a contraction of the backslang ecaf; cod , bad, fake; zhoosh, to titivate; drag, clothing, a special outfit; dish, attractive, to gossip or bum; trade, sexual partner; colin, horn, erection; fantabulosa, fantabulosa.

The radio comedy sketch show, Round the Horne, introduced two regular characters, Julian and Sandy, who spoke a version of polari.

Many polari words are recognisable: aqua, manjaree, vada, bona, omi, even polari itself. You can probably guess at their meanings: water, food or to eat, look or see, good, man, and talk.

By the way, the next time you "cold-call" someone, looking for a positive outcome, you are speaking Polari.

Polari, or "The Lost Language of Gay Men" as Paul Baker has it in his wonderfully readable lexicon of that name, is the secret parlance through which gay men secretly communicated with each other during most of the 20th century.