4 June 2020 (updated 15 June 2020)
Bob’s Your Uncle is a British expression meaning everything will be all right, everything is arranged, no worries. Alas, the identity of Bob is unknown, and the early record of the phrase is sketchy, affording few clues as to its origin.
The website Wordhistories.net reports an early, isolated appearance in the East Aberdeenshire Observer (Peterhead, Scotland) from 12 November 1891. I have not been able to independently verify its accuracy. That website reports the paper as saying:
Teetotalers, as a rule, are always to be viewed with a certain amount of suspicion. The very principle—if principle it can be called—which differentiates them from the great mass of ordinary humanity, proves that there is a specially weak point in their natures, that they are morally and mentally lop-sided, and therefore “worth the watching.” It is a relief to know that the lop-sided Feuars will be well watched while Bailie Ross sits at the Board, and to him I with confidence address the counsel “Go it as you have begun! Bob’s yer Uncle!”
If this quotation is accurate and dated correctly (I have no reason to think it isn’t; I just am unable to check), it pushes the date of the phrase somewhat earlier but still gives us no clue as to its origin.
The oldest use that I have found for the phrase is in a song title. Unfortunately, the songwriter and the lyrics are unknown. All I have is a reference to the song in a 1923 advertisement by the Herman Darewski Music Publishing Company that appears in the British publication The Stage:
New Songs.
You May Have Some Loving But You Can’t Have It All
Dearest You’re the Nearest to My Heart
Forever Tomahawk Blues
Trifling Bobs Your Uncle
The phrase next appears in a series of June 1924 advertisements for a theatrical revue that was appearing in a Dundee, Scotland theater. The ad for 19 June 1924 reads:
VICTORIA THEATRE
6.50—Twice Nightly.—8.50
The Great Comedy Revue
BOB’S YOUR UNCLE
Unfortunately, there is no information about this performance other than the title. Whether or not it is related to the song advertised the previous year is unknown.
About ten years later, a song of that title turns up again. This time it is performed by Leslie Sarony and Leslie Holmes, an act billed as The Two Leslies. A review of their act that appears in the Hull Daily Mail on 22 January 1935 reads:
Song writers may be numerous; "hit"-song writers are not so numerous; and songster-"hit"-song-writers are but few. Of the latter class are these Leslies, writing all their own material, and scoring "hits" nearly all the time. Think of "Rhymes," "Tweet, tweet," "Ain't it grand to be blooming-well dead?" "The Old Sow," "Wheezy Anna"-and wait for "Try" and "Bob's Your Uncle" (this last title will eclipse all the rest).
Sarony, in particular, became rather well known, but I can find no other mention of a song titled Bob’s Your Uncle by him. It could be the same song advertised in 1923, and Sarony could have been one of the writers and performers of the 1924 revue of that title, but we simply don’t know. The parenthetical comment about the song eclipsing the others hints that it might have been a hit, but the lack of information about the song, including the lack of extant lyrics, militates against it being well known.
These early musical titles tell us that the phrase was circulating in the 1920s, but they don’t give us any information about how it was used, what it meant, or what its origin is. There are later songs of that title or that use the phrase in their lyrics, as well.
The earliest extant use that gives us an idea of how the phrase was used is in a personal advertisement taken out by a litigant who had won a civil lawsuit. From the Essex Newsman of 3 March 1928:
Mr. A.H. Solder (Bob’s your Uncle) wishes to THANK all good friends for their congratulations on his successfully defending the action in the High Courts this week.
It’s a bit cryptic, but by using it Solder seems to be saying that the matter is settled, everything is good. Another instance that conveys the same sparse information comes from the world of horseracing. In November 1932, a horse name Bob won the Epsom Derby Cup, prompting a sportswriter to say:
It was a case of “Bob’s your uncle” at Derby yesterday, for the three-year-old of that name put up a splendid performance to win the Derby Cup.
Clearly this is a play on the existing phrase and the name of the horse.
A few years later we get an account of it being used in speech, by a man arrested for drunk driving, as reported by the Essex Chronicle on 11 December 1936:
Witness [i.e., Police Constable McKenna] asked him if he had a friend with him to drive the car, and he replied: “Yes, no, I don’t know where my friends are, do you? What’s the matter? Let’s have a drink.”
Witness continued: He then patted me on the cheek and said, “I have been a naughty boy. Had one over the eight. Not so bad Bob’s your uncle.”
Finally, we get a clear sense of how Bob’s your uncle is used in a 1937 account of a man describing how easy he has it at work. From the Yorkshire Evening Post, 11 January 1937:
“So long as you behave yourself, nurse your congregation, say a few commonplace and trite things to your folk every week, Bob's your uncle.” For the moment I could not recall an avuncular Robert, but I knew what my acquaintance meant.
So, from these early uses we understand how the phrase was used and that it was in use in the 1920s, but we still have no idea who Bob is. If we had the lyrics to the 1923 song, that might point the way—that song might even be the origin. But we don’t have them, and the fact that we don’t hints that the song, as well as Sarony’s 1935 song (if they aren’t one and the same), wasn’t all that popular and is thus unlikely to have been the origin.
Where does it come from? The most likely explanation, although one that is by no means certain, is that it is a play on an older slang phrase all is bob, meaning all is well. This use appears as early as 1699 in a slang dictionary:
It’s all bob, c. all is safe, the bet is secured
The problem with this explanation is that this use of bob or all is bob seems to die out around 1850. The gap in recorded coverage is such that those who were likely to have used Bob’s your uncle in the 1920s, wouldn’t have been alive long enough to remember the older slang expression.
Another explanation that is commonly proffered is that the phrase relates to Robert Cecil, the third marquess of Salisbury, and his nephew Arthur Balfour. The younger man rose through party and government ranks while his uncle was prime minister, creating rumblings of nepotism. The dates are right for this. Balfour was appointed Secretary for Scotland in 1886 and as Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1887, while his uncle was prime minister. He then succeeded his uncle as prime minister in 1902. But other than it being chronologically possible, we have no evidence that the phrase is indeed linked to Cecil and Balfour, and the explanation bears all the marks of an after-the-fact justification rather than a true origin.
[On 15 June 2020 I added the 1891 citation.]
Sources:
Advertisement. Evening Telegraph (Dundee, Scotland). 19 June 1924.
“Allegations Against a Chelmsford Motorist.” Essex Chronicle (Chelmsford, England), 11 December 1936, 4.
Baker, John. “Bob’s Your Uncle: Antedating and History.” American Dialect Society Mailing List (ADS-L), 25 August 2014.
B.E. A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew. London: W. Hawes, 1699. Early English Books Online.
“Bob’s Your Uncle” (personal advertisement). Essex Newsman (Chelmsford, England). 3 March 1928, 1.
The Ferret. “Careful Sailor Good To-Day.” Courier and Advertiser (Dundee, Scotland). 19 November 1932, 7.
Goranson, Stephan. “Bob’s your Uncle antedated (?) to 1928, 1929...” American Dialect Society Mailing List (ADS-L), 5 July 2012.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. bob’s your uncle phr., bob adj.
Herman Darewski Music Publishing, Advertisement, The Stage, 11 January 1923, 2.182, 28.
“Tivoli—Variety.” Daily Mail (Hull, England), 22 January 1935, 5.
Tréguer, Pascal. “Meaning, Origin, and History of ‘Bob’s Your Uncle.’” Wordhistories.net. 4 June 2018.