"Taking the mickey" is the slightly more polite way of saying "taking the piss"... ridiculing, making fun of.... "Are you taking the mickey out of me??" x

The phrase "to take the Mickey" dates from at least the 1930s in various forms; the oldest version recorded in print, from 1935, is to take the mike out of, as in from a book called "Cockney Cavalcade" In that sense I believe it was used to mock the Irish, and sometimes meant "to take a piss" Another meaning is "to tease or mock". Hope this helped.....Have a good day! http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/t.htm

Alternative forms: take the Michael, take the mick . From Cockney rhyming slang to take the Mickey Bliss (for take the piss) Micturations: Swear-words that do not pertain to body parts invariably refer to bodily functions or secretions. If you were to ridicule someone for being too 'full of themself', you would 'take the piss' out of them. As the word 'piss' became categorised as vulgar, the phrase was modified - 'taking the micturations', later shortened to 'taking the mickey' (nothing to do with a person called Michael). http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A753527 http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Take_the_mickey Taking the mickey and taking the piss are British slang expressions meaning to tease or ridicule. The former can also be shortened as to take the mick. "Take the mickey" is an abbreviated form of the Cockney rhyming slang "take the mickey bliss", meaning 'take the piss' (out of x). E.g. "Stop taking the mickey out of Billy, he's very sensitive and you're upsetting him." Cf. 'take the Michael' and 'extract the Michael'. [1930s] The term sometimes refers to a form of mockery in which the mocker exaggerates the other person's characteristics; pretending to take on their attitudes, etc., in order to make them look silly. The Internet phenomenon known as a 'troll' is generally someone taking the mickey out of a particular point of view. An alternate theory of its etymology[1] is that mickey is a contraction of micturition or micturate, meaning urination / urine / urinate i.e. piss, "mickey" being a suitable alternative when, for instance, in the company of those liable to be offended by "piss". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_the_mickey It dates from at least the 1930s in various forms; the oldest version recorded in print, from 1935, is to take the mike out of, as in this from a book with the title Cockney Cavalcade: “He wouldn’t let Pancake ‘take the mike’ out of him”. It’s said to have its origin in the rhyming slang to take the mickey bliss, that means to take the piss. Mickey as a diminutive form of Michael has been common for many years, but how it got together with “bliss” is unknown, so we’ve no idea whether it is a reference to an Irish Mick. As the form first recorded is already elliptical, either the rhyming slang is actually older than the 1930s or some other source has to be looked for. In the 1950s a mock-genteel version to extract the Michael became briefly fashionable. http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-tak1.htm It is sometimes reported that the phrase originates as a variant of the slang phrase 'take the piss' and the the 'Mickey' refers to micturate. This seems rather fanciful and there's no evidence to support that view. It is now more generally accepted that the phrase came about as rhyming slang. 'Taking the piss' does play its part as the rhyming slang refers to a (yet to be identified) character called Mickey Bliss. So, 'taking the piss' became 'taking the Mickey Bliss' and then just 'taking the Mickey'. An early citation of the longer form 'taking the Mickey Bliss' would be useful here, but I've not come across one. Taking the piss is reported as originating in the UK in the 1930s and 'taking the Mickey' probably came not long afterwards. The first form of the phrase in print - as 'take the mike' - comes from 1935, in George Ingram's Cockney Cavalcade: "He wouldn't let Pancake 'take the mike' out of him." The precise wording - 'take the Mickey' doesn't appear in print until a few years later. The earliest I've found as yet is in J. Henry's Who lie in Gaol, 1952: "She's a terror. I expect she'll try and take the mickey out of you all right. Don't you stand for nothin'." http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/344000.html