Kyle Sandilands reveals the reason why ‘eshays’ are so dangerous

KIIS FM radio host Kyle Sandilands has revealed why ‘eshays’ are so dangerous.

On Friday, the 49-year-old warned listeners about teenagers who are part of a so-called gang sweeping across Australia and terrifying parents.

‘They are not to be messed around with these eshays,’ he said on The Kyle and Jackie O Show.

‘They look like a 10-year-old boy but then you can be getting smacked in the train by one of these.’

‘You’ve got to be careful,’ the radio host warned.

An eshay is Australian slang for an lad who purchases ‘fresh gear’ in an attempt to maintain a ‘gangster’ appearance.

Favoured labels for the fashionable eshay include Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, and Lacoste, paired with Nautica, Adidas, Under Armour and Ellesse.

Some eshays scramble words and put ‘ay’ on the end in a form of pig Latin. ‘Eetswa’ means ‘sweet’ and ‘chill’ becomes ‘illchay’.

Eshays are said to have spread from Sydney’s inner-city graffiti scene in the 1980s through Housing Commission estates and out into the suburbs.

Parents on Sydney’s Northern Beaches have recently expressed concerns about anti-social behaviour of teens they describe as dressing like eshays.

The term eshay is similar to the UK phrase ‘chav’ and can be interchangeable with ‘lad’, which in turn sometimes becomes ‘adlay’.

‘Eshay’ may have started as ‘eshay adlay’ – pig Latin for ‘he’s lad’ or be related to ‘sesh’, for a prolonged period of drug consumption.