Original use of this alternative, ‘racially offensive’ gammon in fact predates the Brexit referendum, first popping up courtesy of writer Caitlin Moran who described then Prime minister David Cameron as a ‘C3PO made of ham’ and a ‘gammon robot’. But delving deeper, it transpires that derogatory use of gammon has been around far longer than you might imagine. The compound adjective gammon-faced is an insult from the early 17th century, and gammon was also used as an exclamation meaning ‘nonsense’, as in ‘That’s gammon.’ It was apparently used by Charles Dickens in his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, and was even at one time a verb, meaning ‘to hoax or deceive someone’.

Original use of this alternative, ‘racially offensive’ gammon in fact predates the Brexit referendum, first popping up courtesy of writer Caitlin Moran who described then Prime minister David Cameron as a ‘C3PO made of ham’ and a ‘gammon robot’. But delving deeper, it transpires that derogatory use of gammon has been around far longer than you might imagine. The compound adjective gammon-faced is an insult from the early 17th century, and gammon was also used as an exclamation meaning ‘nonsense’, as in ‘That’s gammon.’ It was apparently used by Charles Dickens in his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, and was even at one time a verb, meaning ‘to hoax or deceive someone’.

Original use of this alternative, ‘racially offensive’ gammon in fact predates the Brexit referendum, first popping up courtesy of writer Caitlin Moran who described then Prime minister David Cameron as a ‘C3PO made of ham’ and a ‘gammon robot’. But delving deeper, it transpires that derogatory use of gammon has been around far longer than you might imagine. The compound adjective gammon-faced is an insult from the early 17th century, and gammon was also used as an exclamation meaning ‘nonsense’, as in ‘That’s gammon.’ It was apparently used by Charles Dickens in his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, and was even at one time a verb, meaning ‘to hoax or deceive someone’.