The spiv didn’t rob banks. He worked the margins—ration books, black-market petrol, stolen cigarette lighters, theatre tickets that materialized in his palm like a conjurer’s trick. He was small-time, which made him both comic and contemptible. In the cinema of austerity, actors like George Cole (as Flash Harry) turned him into a folk antihero: waistcoat straining over a sly belly, trilby tilted, patter as slippery as eels. You couldn’t trust him, but you couldn’t help watching him.

The spiv’s decline was tied directly to the end of rationing. Once the markets reopened and goods became legally plentiful in the mid-1950s, the "man on the corner" lost his leverage. Many spivs transitioned into legitimate (if still slightly dodgy) car sales or market trading, while the word itself slowly evolved into "wide boy" or "del boy" (famously immortalized in Only Fools and Horses ).