Griff Rhys Jones has sent intrigued scholars (well, me) rushing to the linguistic reference books (well, google) after he claimed that his late comedy partner Mel Smith was responsible for coining the phrase "the Dog's Bollocks".

Rhys Jones was on BBC One's The One Show promoting his new tour The Cat's Pyjamas when he quipped that the canine scrotum phrase had also been an alternative title "though apparently I wasn't allowed to use that". Rhys Jones avoided a live TV kerfuffle by not actually saying the word "bollocks" on the pre-watershed BBC show.

He added that Mel Smith, who died in 2013, came up with the famous phrase and, sure enough he seems to be - largely correct. According to Word Histories the phrase "it sticks out like a dog’s ballocks" dates from the 1920s but means something slightly different, meaning something that the speaker considers is patently obvious. It can also mean "the typographical colon-dash (:—)"

However, Mel Smith used the phrase in 1986 and seems to have been the one who conferred the meaning of "the best" on it, although before then the phrase "the bollocks" had been used to mean the best in a 1981 article about a Yamaha Motorbike in the magazine Super Bike.

But as for The Dog's Bollocks, the Word Histories website says: "The earliest known occurrence of the dog’s bollocks is from—or related to—the 1986 version of The Gambler, a musical by Peter Brewis, Bob Goody and Mel Smith, first staged at Hampstead Theatre, London, on 15th April of that year. The quotation in the 3rd edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is as follows:

In P. Brewis et al. Gambler (cassette tape sleeve notes): ‘They are of the opinion that, when it comes to Italian opera, Pavarotti is the dog’s bollocks.’

The phrase worked its way into common parlance and was even used as the title of a Viz book. 

So it would appear that Griff Rhys Jones was pretty much correct in giving his much missed comedy partner deserved credit here. Which is only fair. After all, when it came to comedy duos Smith and Jones were indeed the dog's bollocks.

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