'everyone/everybody and his/their uncle'

Posted by GPP on August 18, 2003

Meaning, roughly, way too many people.

There's an interesting discussion of this phrase, and of "Uncle Tom Cobley and all", at
[Dead link removed - ed] , with a link to
www.btinternet.com/ ~mark.cobley/uncletc/widecom.html .
Is anyone in the UK, or elsewhere, familiar with the 'Tom Cobley' expression to mean the same thing--or something else?