I've rabbited on about Cockney Rhyming Slang (CRS) before. Here's a nice video posting explaining CRS. I like Scooby for clue (or should that be clew?).
Most of that was pretty accurate. There were a couple I hadn't heard but that could just be me. I don't think that you can really call things like "It's all gone Pete Tong" cockney rhyming slang though. For me it fails on two counts. First, it isn't cockney. It's used mainly by affluent middle class students affecting the cockney speech patterns and second it's never used in an abbreviated form - no one would just say "It's all gone Pete". Mockney rhyming slang perhaps.
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
The rhyming slang, you mean, or Cockney itself? Cockney is a dialect of English spoken by people living in part of London. The rhyming slang originated as a thieves' cant and was deliberately obscure so The Man didn't understand what was being discussed.
It's generally used nowadays for fun, but a lot of people will use elements without realising it. For instance, someone might refer to their hair as their 'Barnet', without realising it comes from rhyming slang - Barnet fair - hair. Nowadays I don't think anyone tries to use it as a thieves' cant
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
An answer I thought I posted to this seems to have gone missing. You use cockney rhyming slang when you are NOT, yourself, a Cockney but are trying to write a gritty crime drama set in London.
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
