Like all the best slang, “geezer” is wonderfully elastic. It could mean, simply, a man, or a man who fulfils some or all of the following traits: old, or at least not young; Cockney, or an Essex resident with Cockney blood; eccentric, slick, a wheeler-dealer, on the make; working class, or at least in possession of the relevant signifiers; white.
Geezers walk many paths. “This is the day in the life of a geezer,” raps Mike Skinner on “Has It Come to This”, the lead single from The Streets’ debut album Original Pirate Material. The day involves weed, videogames and “soundsystem bangers”; his boys have “gold teeth, Valentinos, and dreads”, so they’re clearly not uniformly pale. A viral TikTok meme that exploded in 2022 describes something different: the “day in the life of a true Brexit geezer”, which involves Toby Carvery, football, pies, pints, and more pints.
That geezer – the avatar for white, working-class masculinity – was derided by left and right for years. If he was employed, he was a “white van man”, if not a “chav”. He was part of a criminal “underclass”, wrote Simon Heffer in 2007. In 2014, Emily Thornberry tweeted a picture of a terraced house with a white van outside and three England flags hanging up, simply captioned “Image from #Rochester”. It got her fired from Labour’s shadow cabinet. Everyone knew what she was alluding to.
Now everyone is ordering the geezer a drink. Danny Dyer is on the way to becoming a national treasure. The Oasis reunion has accelerated a revival in Nineties lad culture aesthetics. The pained earnestness of Gareth Southgate, and the abundant successes of the Lionesses, have scrubbed national football of toxicity. When the geezer cries “CAM ON INGERLAND SCOR SOM FACKIN GOALS”, as one meme has it, we all roar along with him. Thomas Skinner is on Strictly. Big John is on Newsnight. “Barry, 63”, a meme of a big ruddy man holding a pint, is blessing your timeline with good cheer.
The right, not without evidence, has decided the geezer is their natural ally in the fight against immigration. Robert Jenrick, Moretti clasped in two hands, delivered a soft, tentative “bosh” while filming vertical video with Thomas Skinner in June. An amusing socioeconomic safari is going on. “Do it for the white working class,” you can imagine clammy Policy Exchange researchers telling themselves, as they try not to gag on pints of Carling. But the left was burned badly enough by the loss of the Red Wall to know that it needs some geezers of its own. Hence the so-called “battle of the boshes”. Big John – the social media personality John Fisher, who, like Skinner, enjoys issuing a “bosh” or two – has been recruited as liberal Britain’s champion, after a Newsnight appearance in which he condemned the racist graffiti that had been scrawled over a Chinese takeaway in York.
Away from the straightforward political showdown is a subtler cultural phenomenon: an endorsement, or at least a tolerance, of geezer masculinity. It is best explained, as so many things are, by a meme. “Choose your mentor young man,” runs the banner along the top. To the left is the “Alpha male e-celeb”: Andrew Tate (“success is exotic cars and hookers”; “you too can be alpha™ with a monthly subscription”) and a teary-eyed Jordan Peterson. To the right is our friend Barry, 63, in the guise of “friendly guy you met in the pub”. “You’re a good kid,” he says. “Me and the lads see all the work you’re putting in.” “We’re proud of ya.” “I think that girl fancies you go talk to her.”
In the popularity of Tate and Peterson, we see that Ross Douthat’s 2016 tweet – “If you dislike the religious right, wait till you meet the post-religious right” – holds for masculinity too. Geezers are not saints, and the high noon of lad culture came with a grim dose of misogyny. But they’re better than what’s followed them. They have little of the zero-sum status obsession of the online manosphere. A geezer is at ease with himself, and unafraid to expose his belly at the football, even if it bears the weight of one too many Chinese takeaways. He is not overly online; his wisdom comes passed down from man to man, rather than delivered between supplement ads on podcasts.
The modern geezer is also likely to be better behaved and more in touch with his feelings than his predecessors. “Too many times, men are not allowed to show their emotions, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with showing your emotions,” Big John told GQ recently – and thus is he embraced by the cultural mainstream. In a funny way, the manosphere’s directive to return to traditional male codes is correct. Just don’t go looking for them on the internet. Ask the friendly guy you met in the pub.
[Further reading: Down with the “positive male role model”]
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