A reference to the pleasure piers in British seaside resorts, which often featured music hall entertainment and were popular working-class holiday locations.

end-of-the-pier (not comparable)

1. (UK, usually derogatory) Pertaining to a bawdy, old-fashioned style of broad comedy.
   • 1999, Andrew Blaikie, Ageing and Popular Culture, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 156:

     Meanwhile, that butt of the end-of-the-pier comedian's joke, the mother-in-law as dictatorial hag, has become a figure associated with nostalgia for the days when workingmen's clubs were just that (and, indeed, marking a time when generations were forced to live cheek-by-jowl in the same household).

   • 2002, Frieze: Contemporary Art and Culture:

     It seems a simple yes or no question, but actually compresses a complex group of ideas - about sexuality, gender, meaning and the figurative history of sculpture - into something you might expect from an end-of-the-pier comedy routine.

   • 2009, Christopher Fowler, Paperboy, Random House, →ISBN, page 180:

     The production employed the John Barry Seven to re-work the songs of Gilbert & Sullivan, setting them against the dancing of Lionel Blair, with eye-rolling, end-of-the-pier jokes from Mike and Bernie Winters and Tommy Cooper.