fat lot

"No, sir, nor to me. I am poor, but I have never ill-used my gift." "A fat lot of use the gift is, then!" said the visitor, rising from his chair.

1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019

"Well, there's your friend Silent Simon, and all the police—" / "A fat lot of good they are!" said Ned.

1919, J. Storer Clouston, chapter 18, in Simon

"I never asked you to get that drug," he said. "Not in so many words," she said. "What do you mean by that?" "Well, a fat lot of fun we were going to have without it."

2001, Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections

They can't launder fast enough, so what do you do with it? Where do you put it? You hide it in somebody else's place; somebody who han't got a clue what's going on and couldn't do a fat lot about it if they did.

2023, Sally Wainwright, 26:09 from the start, in Happy Valley, season 3, episode 2, spoken by Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire)