What’s the origin of the phrase ‘Up the apples and pears’?
The Cockney rhyming slang origin of this expression is well established and it was one of the earliest of its kind. The familiarity of apples and pears to the costermongers of London’s street markets put it forward as an obvious slang alternate for stairs.
The expression is now used much less than in the past, after all, there are numerous alternative rhymes for stairs. London’s East-end children are now as unlikely to be told to ‘get up the apples to bed’ as middle-class children are to be told to ‘go up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire’.