Any Old Iron (song)

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"Any Old Iron" is a British music hall song with lyrics written by Charles Collins and Fred E. Terry, and music by E.A. Sheppard. Harry Champion sang it as part of his act, and recorded it in 1911.^[1]

The song title and refrain is a pun on the traditional cry of the rag-and-bone trade.

The song may also be a coded reference to the singer as a gay man, or a man taken to be gay. In Cockney rhyming slang, iron means a gay man (iron = iron hoof = poof), gay men had adopted a green tie as their badge, and a fob watch and chain was dapper dressing. ^[2] The song begins with the singer thinking "I look a dandy" being followed by "a lot of kiddies" shouting at him "Any Old Iron". The song is understood this way by Albert Steptoe, a rag-and-bone man, in the TV comedy Steptoe and Son, Series 5, broadcast in 1970.