Gaw blimey me ol’ china! Found me way up the apples this mornin’ and before I’d ‘ad a chance to get me Brenda in the ‘Enry, let alone nip in the Gary for an Eartha, me bleedin’ dog went off. ‘What a Berkshire’ I thought, but the minute I picked up I twigged just who it was (gravy!); so I sat me Khyber down on the lion’s and proceeded to ‘av – you’ve guessed it – a rabbit!

Come on… did you really think we were gonna do this any other way?

Like Yorkshire puddings, a cup of Earl Grey, or mindless, jingoistic football violence, Chas & Dave have become a British institution. Though so often derided for their comic style – annoying songs like ‘Snooker Loopy’ and ‘Rabbit’ have, sadly, been their defining moments – in recent years they’ve picked up some well-deserved kudos from the likes of The Libertines and Jools Holland.

This, combined with the fact the cockney duo were among the first in Britain to drop that nasty habit of singing in an American accent (coining the phrase ‘rockney’ in the process… mixing cockney with rock – d’you see what they’ve done there?) means that in our book they’re right diamond geezers.

Anyway, back to that whole “pickin’ up the blower and ‘avin’ a bleedin’ rabbit” incident. Here’s how it went…

“I was in a band in North London,” says Chas Hodges on the origins of his pre-Dave friendship with Jerry Lee Lewis. “I bought a bass guitar in 1959, but before that I was playing guitar in a skiffle group.

“When I bought this bass it was virtually a new instrument in Britain. I was the only one in North London to have a bass guitar and I was earning a fortune because all the bands wanted me to sit in with them.”

Hodges ended up playing bass with a band called Mike Berry And The Outlaws, who had “a couple of hits at the end of 1960” and joined Jerry Lee Lewis and Gene Vincent on a tour of Britain and Germany soon afterwards.

“It was great because I was hooked on him having seen him when I was younger and that was what made me really want to play the piano. I was always learning a bit but it was on that tour that I really came on miles because watching Jerry Lee every night and him briefly showing me stuff as well made me come on leaps and bounds.

“He actually quotes me as his favourite bass player and he also said that he knew Chas would make it as soon as he gave up the bass and got down to the keyboards.”

Chas Hodges didn’t actually form a proper band with Dave Peacock until 1978. Having met in 1972 when sharing a lift home from Chas’s then girlfriend (now his wife), the two developed a close friendship based at first on a shared love of the same music.

“Dave always said he knew me before I knew him because I was sort of a bit of a celebrity in North London back then - I’d been in bands that had had a few hits you see,” he recalls. “Dave was in like a semi-pro band and when we got to know each other we just found we had almost identical taste in music.

“We were both bass players at the time and we became friends and used to go out and see gigs together or just go round each others houses and play records – it was quite a few years before we decided to form a band.”

Both in separate bands and both having just returned from their own American tours, Chas & Dave (as they’d later be known) decided that they’d had enough of singing in the faux fifties rock ‘n’ roll American accents that were normal at the time for British pop singers.

It was Hodges who came up with the ‘germ’ of the idea. “We called it ‘rockney’,” he says. “Actually, Dave remembers when I thought up the word. We were on tour with 10cc at the time and were coming home on the train, and people that hadn’t heard us used to ask what type of music we did and we used to say, ‘well it’s a bit of a mixture of rock n’ roll, a bit of music hall here and there, and a bit of London and a bit of ourselves really’. They would be none the wiser so I thought of this word ‘rockney’ to describe it.

“My feelings were and still are that anybody else can do what they want – sing in an American accent or whatever – but I’m just not gonna do it. The record companies were sort of like a bit taken aback at the time and were saying ‘you’re not gonna sell any records outside of London’ and we said ‘well I think we will. We’ve got the rest of our lives to think of and I don’t want to go round singing in a false American accent’. So that’s how it started. And everybody’s doing it now so I like to think that we were sort of pioneers.”

Chas & Dave never really received much recognition for the invention of the ‘rockney’ style; and despite being among the first bands around to embrace their London twang, became better known for their cheeky, cockney hits of the eighties such as ‘Rabbit’ and ‘Snooker Loopy’.

It was not until The Libertines called for the band to support them at The Forum and Brixton Academy in 2003 and 2004 – having cited the duo’s music hall/rock ‘n’ roll sound as an influence - that they enjoyed a resurgence and were finally embraced by a more credible audience. This led to a Glastonbury performance in 2005 as well as a Jools Holland invitation.

“The Libertines,” says Hodges. “That was great. It really opened things up for us. Because there’s a lot of people out there that think ‘oh, Chas & Dave… they’re a bit naff’ you know, but as soon as they (The Libertines) said our names then suddenly you’re cool.

“We’ve got the best crowd now that we’ve ever had. What’s great is that they really listen now. I pride myself on my piano playing and I’ll put stuff in that I think is really good, but in general it has tended to wash over people in the past. Now though they really listen. We have young kids jumping up and shouting at us to never retire. It’s great.”

Chas Hodges has just recorded a solo album on which he plays every instrument, and written a book called The Story Of Chas & Dave (out for Christmas). The pair still regularly perform, though Peacock takes a back seat these days on writing duties, and Hodges tells me that since the band’s recent resurgence he’s been inspired to turn things down that he might have accepted before in favour of projects that are closer to his heart artistically.

At the end of the day though – despite the continued association with Dennis Taylor and co - he’s proud of everything he’s done… “There’s a lot of musicians that I like that have done some comical stuff over the years. It’s sort of a bit unfortunate that people think that if you do something funny you can’t be any good.

“Or they think that’s all you do – it’s strange. It doesn’t really bother me to be honest because I just do what I do and I think it’s good. So whether it be ‘Rabbit’ or ‘Aint No Pleasing You’, I’ve never been frightened of being uncool or whatever.

“If I want to do something I do it, and there’s all there is to it.”