Fabulosa! is an essential document of recent history - a fascinating and fantastically readable account of this funny, filthy, and ingenious language.

Polari is a language that was used chiefly by gay men in the first half of the twentieth century. It offered its speakers a degree of public camouflage and a means of identification.

Its colorful roots are varied-from Cant to Lingua Franca to dancers' slang-and in the mid-1960s it was thrust into the limelight by the characters Julian and Sandy, voiced by Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams, on the BBC radio show Round the Horne ("Oh hello Mr Horne, how bona to vada your dolly old eek!").