Bob's your uncle
"There you go; it's as simple as that."
The popular story is deliciously specific: in 1887, British Prime Minister Robert ("Bob") Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, appointed his own nephew Arthur Balfour to a string of prestigious political posts, prompting cynics to joke that having "Bob as your uncle" was all it took to succeed. It's a great story about nepotism, but the phrase isn't actually recorded in print until the 1930s, decades after the alleged event, so historians can't confirm the political scandal is genuinely where it came from, rather than being a later folk explanation attached to an already-existing phrase.
Myth vs. FactThe Robert Cecil/Arthur Balfour nepotism story is told as definite fact very often. The multi-decade gap between the 1887 event and the phrase's first recorded use makes that link unproven.
Sources: Earliest citation from the 1930s, per the Oxford English Dictionary; the Salisbury/Balfour anecdote is widely repeated but undocumented as the actual coining event.
Quick react
Discuss
New comments are held for a quick check before they show up here.
Loading comments…