Oh not this again..
It’s a Northern expression of surprise or excitement, used in situations when one is perhaps unable to think of something to say and swearing is therefore inappropriate. If you caught the vicar up to his taters in your mum, if the whippet you bought in good faith from a man from Barnoldswick turned out to be lame, if the pie you bought from a pie shop in that Hebden Bridge turned out to be made by a fat bloke from Huddersfield rather than a slender lesbian pastry chef, if the bus that you assumed would take you home from watching speedway at the Shay stadium stopped running two hours previously, if the lady in the nightclub who asked you to buy her some chips turned out to be fourteen, bloody fourteen I tell thee, if you decided to walk to the next bus stop to keep warm, missed the last bus and had to sleep under a pile of cardboard, and more positively, if the girlfriend you decided to get rid of turned up at your house in her mums fur coat had nowt on, that’s NOWT on underneath, and the man in the kebab shop gave you free chips because you’d been sick outside instead of inside, and when you got up in t’morning, your mum said she liked the flowers that you’d stolen from outside the Civic Centre….
You might say crikey.
It used to be blimey, but then all the trouble started and I decided I’d choose something totally different.