OI OI

I’m on a bus with some teenagers who are editing pictures of themselves on their phones. One of them keeps saying ‘Oi oi!’

How’s that got into the lingo? All the other tropes are there: the upward inflection, the over use of adverbs like actually, properly, definitely, and seriously. Yeah makes its customary appearance and there have been some dropped T consonants and likes.

But a cockney exclamation of oi oi is new. Is it some TV show? It’s slipped in where a few years ago an OMG would have gone, which in a way, is a good thing.

The thing is - it’s the kind of thing I might say. I’m not going to launch into a ‘I’m not being funny yeah but...’ but I can hear myself exclaim ‘oi oi!’ should I find some unexpected chocolate, or an old friend appears on the other side of the road.

So, does that make me sort of officially cool? I mean alongside my retro Top Gun t-shirt and my 1978 baseball cap of course. Feel free to let me know if it does. Though of course, if you greet me with an ‘oggy oggy oggy’ I might just have to respond appropriately.