Rude guide causes blushes

You were a bit Oliver Twist last night, and today you can't find your Eddie Grundies. Frankly, you feel a bit Moby Dick and fear you might Wallace and Gromit.

Students of rhyming slang will understand this, but for those in need of help, here is a translation: you had too much to drink yesterday and this morning you can't find your underwear; you feel unwell and might be sick.

These are among the few printable expressions from Rude Rhyming Slang, a new guide to the idiom. So salty are some they are sure to raise eyebrows among the pearly kings and queens of cockney London.

Sex, naturally, is the main obsession, with pages of colourful names for genitalia, male and female. With the exception of Mars and Venus (male) and Elizabeth Regina (female) it would perhaps be wiser not to mention any of them.

The guide also contains nine ways of saying haemorrhoids. Poor old Clement Freud: how he must tire of being linked to such an unglamorous and uncomfortable complaint.

Many of the famous names hijacked by rude slang belong to a bygone era. Could Raquel Welch (belch), Peters and Lee (pee) and Diana Dors (drawers) ever have imagined a legacy like this?

Still, Posh and Becks makes the grade as slang for sex and, adding international glamour to a smutty exercise, Hollywood director John Woo is there as a euphemism for - well, you can guess.

Other gems include Adam and the Ants (pants) and Alan Whickers (knickers). The 33-page book is published by Abson, which produces a series of light-hearted dictionaries, including Hip Hop English, a definitive guide to modern street slang.

It was compiled by Tom Nind, 26, a floor manager at Foyles bookshop, who received help from an unlikely source - his mother. "My mum quite enjoyed getting into the subject and sent me lots of things her friends had told her about," said Mr Nind, who lives in north Dulwich. "She does know some genuine East End folk and seemed genuinely shocked at what she was hearing." Research included having "drunken conversations in pubs".

"It was a lot of fun to compile," he said. "I read some books on rhyming slang, I spoke to friends, and I found the internet quite useful. But I'm not sure it has any scholarly value."