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Much of the dialog and characters' thoughts in The Book of Dave are written in Mokni, a mostly phonetically-spelled derivative of Cockney English. A glossary is available to explain some of it, and most of the rest is understandable with a little bit of background in contemporary Cockney dialect.

But I can't figure out "nodditankijelli". It appears in the phrase "nodditankijelli snuggul"—so, "something snuggle"--in the first few pages. There are lots of examples of Mokni phrases being squished together with no spaces, so this could easily be a multiword phrase.

Can anyone figure out / does anyone know what it is actually supposed to mean?

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    In The Language of Dystopia, Jessica Norledge calls 'nodditankijelli' a 'seemingly original neologism that is difficult to place or define'. In other words, not an existing Cockney utterance transformed by Will Self, but rather a new word Self has invented. As such, it may not be meant to completely decipherable.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Mar 24, 2023 at 7:32
  • 'completely decipherable' - or decipherable at all. If it's any help, I think I can see 'nod [off]', 'hanky jelly', and 'snuggle', which maybe give a sort of messy post-coital feel. But that's just me.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Mar 24, 2023 at 8:40
  • @MichaelHarvey the context of the phrase is strongly suggestive that it's connected to sex acts.
    – Matt Thrower ♦
    Commented Mar 24, 2023 at 8:47
  • The Guardian's reviewer, M John Harrison, wrote 'Will Self is such an overpowering presence in his own books that it's sometimes difficult to tell what he's actually written', and, tellingly, 'The Book of Dave is a novel about trying to come back from the brink of something without quite knowing what it is'. I suggest that this not-knowing is created by Self at least partly by scattering 'words' that are impossible to decipher.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Mar 24, 2023 at 10:41
  • Harrison is widely considered one of the major stylists of modern fantasy and science fiction, and a "genre contrarian". A suitable choice of reviewer, perhaps. In the interests of full disclosure, maybe I should say that I find Will Self, who has been prominent in the UK media for at least 30 years, simultaneously very irritating personally and also a very intelligent, thoughtful, capable, and original writer.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Mar 24, 2023 at 10:49

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One possible explanation is a lubricating agent ("jelly") for an orifice ("naughty tank"). As Michael Harvey's comments on your question show, though, that particular word has been noted as being particularly hard to parse.

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