"Bob's your uncle"

[Douglas G. Wilson]

"Uncle Bob" of course exists in many families and there are multiple cases
of "Uncle Bob" in literature. Obviously most of these are unrelated to the
usage in question.

The conventional story about "Bob's your uncle", referring to Robert Cecil
and Albert Balfour, is believable ... but I would expect that some
newspaper or similar reference from ca. 1890 would record this.

An alternative which is not time-specific would take "Bob" to be a
replacement for "God" -- as in "So help me Bob" = "So help me, God" (which
I think is still current) -- and "uncle" to be metaphoric, referring to a
helper or advocate or [perhaps mythical] rich relative as shown in Farmer
and Henley. So the expression would be like "... and God's your
helper/relative", = "... and God's on your side" = "... and you're in Fat
City" or so. Such an expression could have existed ca. 1890 without [much]
representation in print because of its transparent blasphemy, perhaps.

-- Doug Wilson