Dad's Army "cold steel"

[Danny McG]

I always thought it was an original Corporal Jones line in Dad's Army - "cold steel, they don't like it".

However I am currently re reading The Looking Glass war by John Le Carre, published four years before Dad's Army was first aired. Just over half way through an agent is being trained and the instructor moves onto knives and the Germans and says "Cold steel, they never did like it".

Another piece of my childhood shattered

 

[HanaBi]

"They don't like it up 'em!"

 

[Susan Boulton]

Actually, an adaption of an old army saying. I came across references to it during my research. "Cold steel, they don't like it (up'em)." As Jimmy Perry was in the Home Guard as a young man, and David Croft, served during WWII, it would be a saying they most likely were familiar with, and being damn good writers, they give it a twist, i.e. the double entendre.