local boy made good

[Jim WALKER]

Dear All,

I have long lurked here, marvelling at people's ability to pre-date attestations and generally seek out the long-lost origins of phrases. Now, hoping that I have buttered you up sufficiently, I'd like to pick your collective brains.

I am, for various reasons, looking at the string "The boy done good", which is something of a cliché associated with football (soccer) in the UK, meant obviously as a laudatory comment on the performance of a player. This may well go back (though this is very speculative) to former footballer Mick Channon who, when commentating on British TV, infamously declared "The boy Lineker done good", referring to a particular player. The expression has entered common parlance, it would seem, in the form "The boy done good"

In looking for this, I keep turning up the string "local boy done good", and while the sense is clear, I can't quite parse the structure here. Is it a local boy (who has) done good? How far back does the expression go - is it traceable? The fact that I see it in many American documents (not least the Department of Homeland Security appropriations http://books.google.fr/books?id=9LXLbQm2fNMC&q=%22local+boy+done+good%22&dq=%22local+boy+done+good%22&hl=fr&ei=C3CzTIyGJMfpOcy7mJAI&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDkQ6AEwBDg8) means that I cannot suspect that the football-related "boy done good" is at play at all here. How similar is it to "local boy makes good"?

Thanks for reading!

Jim Walker

Senior Lecturer

University Lyon 2, France

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