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Get up to speed with Derry Girls slang

Stacia Briggs

Published: 12:24 AM January 4, 2018 Updated: 3:04 PM October 10, 2020

Derry Girls - James Maguire (Dylan Llewellyn), Michelle Mallon (Jamie-Lee O'Donnell), Erin Quinn (Saoirse Jackson), Orla McCool (Louisa Harland) and Clare Devlin (Nicola Coughlan), (C) Channel 4 - Credit: C4

Do you know your mucker from your craic? Your slabber from your dose? Get up to speed with Derry Girls slang before the sharp new sitcom set in the 1990s starts on Channel 4 - think The Inbetweeners in The Troubles with eyeliner

Every town has its own slang that only the locals understand – but if you're planning to watch Channel 4's new comedy Derry Girls, you've just about got time to give yourself a crash course in the 1990s slang used by Erin, Orla, Granda Joe, Aunt Sarah, Michelle and James are fluent in.

The series, written by Lisa McGee, is set against the spectre of The Troubles in Northern Ireland (not the first comedy background you'd picture) and looks at the everyday lives of ordinary people who just happen to live in extraordinary times.

Erin and her friends are used to seeing their country on the news and speaking in acronyms – IRA, UDA, RUC – they're also used to seeing armed police in armoured Land Rovers and British Army check points. But on the other hand, it's the time of Murder She Wrote, The Cranberries, Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie, Doc Martens, bomber jackets, The X Files, Nirvana and Wayne's World. And while The Troubles hang over her home town, Erin has troubles of her own that seem just as important.

* Derry Girls starts on Channel 4 on January 4 at 10pm.