BM Co. Fleet Air Arm, Bomber Command, D-Day etc.

[pennymachines]

I did have a mad moment in working out fuel and ferry costs, but it was only a brief mad moment

Not put off by your trip to the Isle of Wight I hope?

[treefrog]

Yes I would not do that again, especially that auction house, the most unhelpful I have ever used and I have used lots throughout the country.....

It is always frustrating seeing machines in far flung places where you know it is just not viable to buy and ship, eg that OW in the Channel Islands recently..... I have not bought a machine in a long time now

[coppinpr]

Wish I'd seen that, I could have got a German collector friend to buy and ship to me for £40 as he has a shiply courier he uses to collect from EH and he will bring machines back for 40 if he's already doing the outward trip. I'd have liked that machine.

[paulbohlmann]

Hi,

I'm the one who bought the "winafag" - still need to pick it up, what is planned next week.

Can you tell me little more about - do you know when it was build?

As far as I know - Fag means Cigarette , but also has a not so nice meaning...
so I was a wondering about the name.
Will let you know more, when i have it in my garage.....

Regards Marco

[pennymachines]

Firstly - Happy New Year Marco and well done on purchasing this unusual allwin for an unusual price.

We don't have anything concrete, but everything about these war themed BMCos suggests they were made during or immediately after WW2. I think probably during, because materials weren't available for new machines for several years after the war and by that time folk were pretty tired of war themes. Also, cigarettes were a prized 'luxury' during and immediately after the war.

'Fag' was established as a colloquial term for cigarette in British English long ago. Apparently it meant 'loose piece, last remnant of cloth' as far back as the 14th century and it was from this 'fag-end' meaning (i.e. the bit that's left after you smoke it) that it became applied to cigarettes. It remains in common use here. 'Fag' as pejorative term for homosexual was more common, it seems, in American usage.

[JC]

It seems a little odd to me that BMCo would come up with an allwin, which we know was produced in a number of variants, as 'Win a Fag'. This seems far more Oliver Whales to me. I don't think I've ever encountered BMCo machines that have paid out anything other than coins - one exception being what appears to be a small number of large auto-pay allwins that dispensed a gift. Is it perhaps more likely that this particular machine was produced from BMCo stock after the war by Whales?

That aside, I'm afraid I do have to take issue with you Mr PM:

......for cigarette in British English long ago......

British English? BRITISH ENGLISH???? Have you been abducted by Microsoft? Please may I remind you, in no uncertain terms, that there is no such thing as British English. There is the English language and there is American English. I bear no malice toward our colonial cousins across the pond for bastardising our spoken and written word, but there is only one ENGLISH language. God save the Queen!


Anyway.....

As far as I know - Fag means Cigarette , but also has a not so nice meaning...

That's American, not a term we've ever used here. However, the term 'fag' was traditionally common in British public schools. A fag was a younger pupil assigned to a more senior boy, to run errands, act as a servant and generally 'do things' - often (so we're told) along the lines of the American use of the word. Read 'Tom Brown's School Days' - will give a good insight to the English public school system, and will probably explain why we all have such stiff upper lips over here.

[john t peterson]

There is the English language and there is American English. I bear no malice toward our colonial cousins across the pond for bastardising our spoken and written word, but there is only one ENGLISH language. God save the Queen!

I resemble that remark.

J Peterson
Proud American Bastardizer of British English

[pennymachines]

It seems a little odd to me that BMCo would come up with an allwin, which we know was produced in a number of variants, as 'Win a Fag'. This seems far more Oliver Whales to me. I don't think I've ever encountered BMCo machines that have paid out anything other than coins - one exception being what appears to be a small number of large auto-pay allwins that dispensed a gift. Is it perhaps more likely that this particular machine was produced from BMCo stock after the war by Whales?

There is a problem regarding the maker of these. I've always understood them to be BMCo. but none of them are included in Arcades & Slot Machines extensive listing for that company. Nor are they listed under Oliver Whales, although Whales did make a Win-A-Cig of course. The auto-pay mechanism is unique and unlike BMCo's other auto pay allwins and also unlike anything else Whales made. It's possible, as you suggest, that the Win-A-Fag was converted from a coin payout by another company (like Whales) but a bigger problem is not really knowing who built it in the first place. On the first page of this topic Gameswat posted an example sporting a label: W. West, Automatic Machine Maker, Bannerdale Road, Sheffield.

Please may I remind you, in no uncertain terms, that there is no such thing as British English.

Whether you like it or not JC (and I'm guessing by your tone, you don't ) British English was a thing a couple of centuries before Bill Gates was in long trousers, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere".

Anyway.....

As far as I know - Fag means Cigarette , but also has a not so nice meaning...

That's American, not a term we've ever used here.

Although that usage was uncommon in the UK when we were kids, it was sufficiently familiar by 2005 that Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews was accused of calling one of his colleagues a faggot. He claimed he was using obscure Italian slang 'faggio' (menial servant) but certainly wasn't referring to meatballs.

[coppinpr]

I bear no malice toward our colonial cousins across the pond for bastardising our spoken and written word

Although I fully agree with JC in that there is only one "English" plus several versions of "Pidgin" English including the version used in the still to be recovered (when the state of the nation improves to a point any one wants it) colony across the North Atlantic I believe he is mistaken when he includes the word "spoken". Having read several books on language development it seems all agree that the version spoken in the southern states of the USA, including the accent (along with several words no longer used in the UK) is in fact how we (the general public) in the UK used to speak at the time (1650 to 1800). It is in fact us that have changed the way we talk, not the colonials (please keep this terrible fact to yourselves and on no account write to the BBC about it ).
This is also true of the true Australian accent which is, so they say, a London Cockney accent, added to of course but much like the version spoken in London in the early 19th cent. I suppose it could be said we IMPROVED on the English spoken word, whereas the colonies did not

[paulbohlmann]

interesting discussion,
be sure - i did not want to start any cultural dispute


br Marco