This evening I was reading an article about the Victorian Police getting a new uniform. As I got to the bottom of the article, there was a quote from Ken Lay, the Cheif Commissioner, who said in reference to the existing uniforms that, "we knew come summer these things just sweat like bally-hoo". This got me to wondering what this meant, I don't know what bally-hoo is or why they would be sweating. I know in Australia we have many different sayings such as, "I am so hungry I could eat the crutch out of a low flying duck", or, "It's better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick". I am used to hearing different sayings, although I am convinced sometimes that people just make them up, and that is what I thought this time about Ken Lay's saying, so I decided to dig deeper.
I thought that I should first try to discover what a bally-hoo might be, and it turns out that it is a small baitfish, which means it is a fish that is used as a lure, when fishing, to attract other bigger fish. Discovering what a bally-hoo was gave me a good impression of why they might be sweating. This conjured up images of little fish on hooks, sweating because they knew that they days were numbered, and that their continued existed depended on there being no predator in the water. This image however lead me to other thoughts, such as how do fish know they are sweating, because they live in the water, and so they couldn't possibly notice if they were sweating. I guess I understand what Ken meant by his saying, 'sweat like bally-hoo", but further searching, without results, has convinced me that he must have made the comment up because he thought it was amusing. However, I would be interested to know if anybody else has ever heard of this fishing saying.
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