Bob’s Your Uncle

You turn left at the first intersection, continue straight until the next one, then turn right, and Bob's your uncle! You are now where you were going. "Bob's your uncle" serves in this instance as a sort of interjection that indicates how simple a task should be, like saying "piece of cake," but it does bring up one crucial question: Who the hell is Bob?

But given that there are a number of genesis theories for his specific idiom, the question is not so simple to answer. The story of blatant political nepotism that claims Bob was none other than Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom at the end of the 19th century, is by far the most widely circulated. The phrase is purportedly in reference to his nephew Arthur Balfour, who he nominated to a number of positions for which he lacked the necessary qualifications, including Chief Secretary for Ireland. Balfour's detractors frequently asserted that his entire political career was due to dear old Uncle Bob.

This makes sense, yet the expression doesn't show up in literature until decades later. The first recorded instance, according to legend, was in a Scottish newspaper in 1924 on the program for the musical revue Bob's Your Uncle. Then, in a song performed by music hall performer Florrie Forde in the early 1930s, we have a definitive appearance. However, in both instances, we have to assume that the expression was already in widespread use and that they didn't just make it up, so the exact origins of his idiom are still unknown.