wazzock?

[Stephen Goranson]

The Daily Mail called Mitt Romney "Devoid of Charm, offensive and a wazzock." (There are numerous variant spellings, including with s instead of z, etc..)
Here, merely, a wild guess, about the etymology, not Romney.
In "Wazzock? I'm baffled, says comic" by Don Frame, March 3, 2007, comic Mike Harding says he used the word as early as 1976, and OED has that: "And I looked round. I was alone... Stood there like a wazzock on the pavement." In the interview he called it "a jagged pebble of a word" that he heard in 1968 or 1969. In the article and in comments there it is claimed: "A rock climb named Wazzok by Dave Gregory at Burbage South, Peak district. BMC guide book Sheffield-Froggatt Area, 1965; later editions have Wazzock." (Stood, pebble, rock--coincidence?)
http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1000/1000908_wazzock_im_baffled_says_comic.html
There is such a book, but I have no access to it.
**If** that rock climb (near in space and time) is, somehow, connected to the current sense, why might a rock climb have been given that name?
Here's the wild guess. There was an African tribe that lived in the mountainous area of northeast Uganda (e.g. Moroto) and the nearby area of Kenya (e.g. Turkwell), and they served as porters, or as dangers, for British mountain climbers. They were called the
Wasuk.

E.g.:
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt/search?id=mdp.39015046396050;view=image;seq=25;q1=wasuk;start=1;size=10;page=search;orient=0

The great rift valley; being the narrative of a journey to mount Kenya and... (London, 1896). Gregory, J. W. (John Walter), 1864-1932.

Stephen Goranson
www.duke.edu/~goranson

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