An off-hand link here, where the author describes the shareware attitude prevalent in the Macintosh world as “a bit spiv-like“, pointed me to this explanation of What a spiv is, and as a bonus also explains what a wide boy is (a term I recall from Marillion lyrics – although I thought David Bowie and Toyah used it too):
“A spiv was typically a flashily dressed man (velvet collars and lurid kipper ties) who made a living by various disreputable dealings, existing by his wits rather than holding down any job. (Another name was wide boy, with wide having the old slang sense of sharp-witted, or skilled in sharp practice.)”
The above is part of a big site called World Wide Words, which adresses such issues as what all those curious slang terms mean and where on earth did they come from.
