Zen10

And now Columbo's no longer on the force, we never will. However, his oafish behaviour alone merited a sound Victorian thrashing, perhaps with an umbrella made of wood and whalebone.

Sally Redux

Her Majesty now has a gunboat standing by

Zen10

Jolly good!

Xebedee

The England I grew up in had punks, skins and mods. Chav's didn't exist then.
In the US, I suppose a chav is a wigger (white gangsta).
They've had wiggers here since rap really got going.

Cross-contamination, then.

Pulaski

I'm not an authority on chaviness, but I'd have said that a chav appears to be closer to a red neck, albeit an urban red neck.

Sally Redux

customsquestion

Interesting you mention only fondling kiddies and not cop killer David Bieber. The yanks really messed up with that letting him get a passport with dead kid's id truly sick. Bieber was illegal in leeds for a long time and worked as a bouncer. How did he make it as long as he did? Of course if a brit ever killed an american cop then immigration policy would forever be altered.

SultanOfSwing

A greyneck, if you will ...

mikelincs

If it was as easy and as cheap to get to the US as it is to Cyprus, Greece and Spain, you would soon know what chavs, and lager louts were.

SultanOfSwing

I have found a new appreciation for the difficulty and cost of the US immigration system.

The EU can keep the chavvy bastards. All the pikeys too.

Steve_

I think the US equivalent of a "chav" is trailer trash, surely. Like the yocals that seem to inhabit large parts of West Virginia. There isn't as much in the way of public housing in the US so they live in trailers.

Steve_

Because he was white and spoke English, it's just like Canadians in the US, had this conversation lots of times, a Canadian gets married to an American, never does the paperwork, American dies and then Canadian or their kids (born in Canada and taken to the US) suddenly realize they should have done some immigration paperwork and they're in the US illegally.

I know Mexicans etc. do this but it's one thing to do it, it's another to be so naive you haven't realized that you've done it!

As I recall the police in the UK arrest people for removal, it's not a separate agency as in the UK, there's the "Border Force" or whatever it's called but actual arrests are done by the police (or were).

Anyway I knew a copper years ago and this was part of his job, in many years on the job he could only remember one American getting deported.

Pulaski

Good point, "trailer trash" is probably closer, though for much of the US, "trailer trash" and "red neck" can be used interchangeably.

customsquestion

Yeah and the american police didn't know he was in England but working as a bouncer though he would have interacted with the english police countless times and he was illegally in england and they did try to clean the bouncing game up around 98 or 99 the murder was christmas 03 so the agency that hired him must have messed up as well. Then again the police never searched him they sat him in the back of the car and he pulled the gun and shot them so they messed up badly you could say

goldenstate31

the word chav is taken from gypsy slang. Short for Chavy.

Which generally means a person, usually a male. However because of the 'little britain' show with vicky pollard her character is how a typical 'chav' looks and acts like.
its not necessarily somebody the OP was referring to