Captain Tom, Garden Fox (with Pierre Novellie) | Monty vs Rommel (Part 4/4)

This episode of Fin vs History is brought to you by Surfshark. Secure your privacy with Surfshark! Enter coupon code FVH for an extra 4 months at ⁠https://surfshark.com/fvh⁠ Let's talk about male mental health. Monty & Rommel (Part Four) The show for people who like history but don't care what actually happened.  For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening and early access to series, become a Truther and sign up to the Patreon ⁠patreon.com/fintaylor 00:00 - Thigh Mogging 06:24 - Come On Lads 11:02 - The Mafia Tax 18:42 - Barely Legal Bruce Forsyth 21:28 - The Pretend Army 26:22 - I Bet His Wee Smells 30:14 - Employ Flamethrowers 33:14 - He’s A Hippie 35:26 - Hitler’s Lashed Out 40:50 - More Army Than Nazi 46:51 - Fuck Eisenhower 51:20 - Monty’s Cooking 55:20 - It’s A Party For Us Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

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  Welcome back to Finn vs. Stu. We're still joined by the colossus, Pianavelli. I meant intellectual and, and also, you're a big guy.

• 1:05Speaker 04

  A looming man.

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  Who happens also to be the biggest man I know.

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  We've been thigh-mogged.

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  Very small thighs, very small knees and Finn's got big ones, but now it's like, it shows the whole gamut.

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  And then behind the paywall, he's put his jeans, jeans up so you don't get to see them.

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  No, exactly.

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  Subscribers only.

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  On the Patreon, we'll get his, get his thighs out.

• 1:25Speaker 03

  Shorts on Patreon, yeah. Do you, do you struggle to find shorts?

• 1:28Speaker 04

  Oh, you always wear shorts though.

• 1:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, but those are the precious shorts that I've discovered. Those are relics almost. I pine for this era we're discussing now of enormous.

• 1:38Speaker 03

  Big shorts.

• 1:38Speaker 05

  Big shorts. Wide, wide shorts.

• 1:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:42Speaker 05

  Somehow wider, somehow wider on the thigh than in the waist.

• 1:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:45Speaker 05

  Huge.

• 1:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, they need to be. My waist is smaller than my thighs.

• 1:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, me too.

• 1:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. I go out like PC Plod.

• 1:52Speaker 04

  It's nice.

• 1:52Speaker 03

  Um, now, we're in part four, the final part of this epic Monty and Rommel series. To recap where we left off, the second battle of Ed Alamein has proved to have hit. A second battle has hit Ed Alamein.

• 2:07Speaker 05

  Someone please Photoshop, it's Rommel whispering to Hitler.

• 2:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:12Speaker 05

  A second Battle of El Alamein has hit.

• 2:15Speaker 03

  Monty has a, he's been there for three months.

• 2:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:18Speaker 03

  And he sorted it out.

• 2:19Speaker 04

  It's pretty good.

• 2:20Speaker 03

  I didn't quite realise, because it's Monty versus Rommel, but Monty basically just comes and goes, nah, nah, fuck off, right, done.

• 2:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:25Speaker 03

  He basically does it in three months.

• 2:26Speaker 04

  But with a lot of these things, there's all the glory of beating the Nazis in all these fields of war. It does always feel like if you break it down, the Allies were always going to win these things.

• 2:37Speaker 03

  Well, this is, this is the great Al Murray, Holland revisionism, I don't, and I imagine you're susceptible to. Because I actually think Pierre, Pierre would be a great person to have done this podcast. The only issue Pierre has is that he cares too much about getting stuff right.

• 2:52Speaker 04

  It's a fatal flaw.

• 2:53Speaker 03

  I've said to you before, you really care about what actually happens.

• 2:58Speaker 04

  I do, yeah.

• 2:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:59Speaker 04

  Unfortunately.

• 3:00Speaker 03

  But so do you.

• 3:01Speaker 04

  It's kind of irrelevant.

• 3:01Speaker 03

  Which is not, not really the spirit of this podcast. But, I mean, when he came to the office this morning, he genuinely inspected our medals as if they were actual medals.

• 3:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. I needed to know.

• 3:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, you need to know.

• 3:12Speaker 04

  I instinctively stood to attention.

• 3:13Speaker 03

  Now, so are you, are you vulnerable, Pierre, to the, the Hobbs-borm argument that World War Two is essentially two factories racing each other?

• 3:23Speaker 04

  I mean, that's a great question. Are you vulnerable?

• 3:25Speaker 05

  Yes, but if you don't use it, then you won't win.

• 3:31Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 3:31Speaker 05

  So it's this whole thing of going, oh, well, actually, they blah, blah, blah. And you go, yeah, but if you can't be bothered to do it, then you'll lose.

• 3:38Speaker 04

  What do you mean can't be bothered? What is this like?

• 3:39Speaker 05

  Well, Vietnam.

• 3:41Speaker 03

  The Italians.

• 3:42Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, yeah. Even Vietnam.

• 3:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:44Speaker 05

  If the Americans could have been, you know, capital B bothered, they'd have just won. But it just would have been horrible.

• 3:50Speaker 03

  Oh, let's explore that riff before.

• 3:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:52Speaker 03

  What do you mean by capital B bothered?

• 3:53Speaker 05

  Like, really, like, we're here for 50 years.

• 3:56Speaker 03

  Right, okay.

• 3:57Speaker 05

  Like, we're, we're not leaving Vietnam.

• 3:58Speaker 03

  Like Japan Night-Night bothered, or?

• 4:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:00Speaker 03

  As in like just Night-Night?

• 4:02Speaker 04

  They put more bombs than World War Two in the jungle, in fucking Laos alone.

• 4:07Speaker 05

  So then if you had like a cadre of like fanatics as opposed to a conscript army full of people who've only just found out about weed and shagging.

• 4:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:13Speaker 05

  It's just like horrible to be there.

• 4:15Speaker 04

  Great music, though.

• 4:16Speaker 03

  But then culturally, in that 20 years, life meant so much more.

• 4:21Speaker 05

  Way more.

• 4:22Speaker 03

  It was precious. It became precious.

• 4:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:24Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:24Speaker 05

  For one of the first time in history, life.

• 4:26Speaker 03

  Life suddenly meant something.

• 4:27Speaker 05

  It matters when someone explodes.

• 4:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, it mattered. Yeah. Before it was irrelevant. It was generally, oh, my dad.

• 4:35Speaker 05

  I've had Zeppelin vinyl.

• 4:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. My dad exploded. Irrelevant.

• 4:39Speaker 05

  Brilliant.

• 4:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, whatever.

• 4:40Speaker 05

  Congratulations.

• 4:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're a man now.

• 4:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, whereas in Vietnam, I guess, even by that point, a soldier dying was a tragedy when it wasn't in World War II.

• 4:51Speaker 04

  But fundamentally, Monty had more resources, more men, more everything than Rommel.

• 4:55Speaker 05

  But crucial.

• 4:56Speaker 04

  Rommel could have powered through, though, and could have been a mental collapse.

• 5:01Speaker 03

  Here's a good counterfactual. Could Rommel have beaten now? I mean, the first battle of El Alamein, which, as we say, is the hipster's choice, my favorite. Because that is Rommel's chance, right? Because before Monty arrives, that's the real chance to break through. But would he ever have actually punched through the geography with that supply line? Could he ever actually have pulled it off and gone all the way to Suez Canal?

• 5:21Speaker 05

  That's what it's all about.

• 5:23Speaker 04

  Not with that geography.

• 5:25Speaker 03

  Unless, what, the Germans, Greeks go like Palestine down, but then there's a Palestine regiment that the Brits have, isn't there?

• 5:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:31Speaker 03

  And then also, sorry, there's also all this fucking French. The Brits fight Vichy French in Syria.

• 5:38Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 5:39Speaker 03

  Which I didn't even know about.

• 5:40Speaker 05

  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. We're still at war with France.

• 5:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're at war with France in World War II.

• 5:45Speaker 05

  I know. Is it French people?

• 5:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:49Speaker 05

  Fuck me.

• 5:50Speaker 04

  Yeah. They're from the naughty half of France.

• 5:52Speaker 05

  So it's all de Gaulle. He managed to whitewash a lot of the absolute crazy shit.

• 5:56Speaker 03

  We've got to get Beu back on to do. We fought the French up in World War II.

• 6:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 6:00Speaker 03

  Brilliant.

• 6:01Speaker 05

  Madagascar.

• 6:01Speaker 03

  But yeah, I mean, Pierre's an absolute encyclopedia for the less experienced.

• 6:05Speaker 05

  We fought the French in Madagascar.

• 6:06Speaker 04

  We did, yeah.

• 6:07Speaker 03

  Fuck crazy.

• 6:08Speaker 05

  I know.

• 6:08Speaker 03

  Anyway, so, yeah, so is there a world in which Vichy French come down through Syria and pincer the Brit?

• 6:14Speaker 05

  I think Rommel could have got through the geography if he'd had uninterrupted supply lines. If you just give him enough fuel, he'll do it, but he just.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  But the fuel is going to Barbarossa at this point.

• 6:25Speaker 05

  But also, the problem is always like, the Royal Navy. Whenever anyone tries to do a complicated plan across the Mediterranean, you just go, yeah, but the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force. So, no.

• 6:34Speaker 04

  But also, we hadn't, yeah.

• 6:35Speaker 03

  Well, Malta, Malta.

• 6:36Speaker 04

  Yeah. And this set the tone for the rest of the war. When did Barbarossa, when did Stalingrad happen?

• 6:41Speaker 03

  It starts in forty, early forty-two, is it?

• 6:44Speaker 04

  And it goes on for nine months, I think.

• 6:46Speaker 05

  Yes, I think so.

• 6:47Speaker 04

  So it's happening during this?

• 6:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, they're almost holding out for like, well, we probably won't win here because we don't have any petrol. But if we hold out long enough.

• 6:55Speaker 04

  To get the Georgian oilfields.

• 6:57Speaker 03

  Army Group South, the whole point of Stalingrad is to get fuel for the whole war machine.

• 7:02Speaker 04

  Everyone's bringing their own gear, it's nice. We've all, we've all, finally out loud.

• 7:07Speaker 03

  We can say, we can say Army Group South out loud.

• 7:10Speaker 04

  Georgian oilfields, ah!

• 7:15Speaker 03

  So, let's, let's keep to the topic though, because we don't want to, we've got to fucking wind the spit away from your. So, Monty, in three months, has Sam allerized Rommel. Fuck off. Rommel is now in retreat, contravening Hitler's orders. And he's got, do we do find out how long the supply line is? He goes all the way back.

• 7:35Speaker 04

  How long is a piece of string?

• 7:36Speaker 03

  Well, it's thousands of miles.

• 7:39Speaker 04

  It's funny to answer that with like, clear, like, we know what we need to know, because it's really important. It's really important.

• 7:46Speaker 03

  Rommel does, Rommel does fight a very good rearguard action, supposedly.

• 7:51Speaker 04

  But he does.

• 7:52Speaker 03

  He's not like the Italians. It's roughly 1,100 miles from El Alamein back to Tripoli.

• 7:59Speaker 04

  You and Berghain is fighting a rearguard action.

• 8:02Speaker 03

  Bravely fighting a rearguard action in Berghain. No, no, no. What do you mean this is a chill out room? There are four men with their fists up my arse.

• 8:11Speaker 03

  Now, now.

• 8:12Speaker 05

  Holding you up like a trophy.

• 8:14Speaker 03

  Like I hold, like we hold you aloft on your wedding day.

• 8:16Speaker 04

  1966 World Cup win.

• 8:18Speaker 03

  Genuinely.

• 8:19Speaker 04

  Probably more holding your arse.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  That was Pierre's wedding. Ivo and myself and one of your best men lifted you up, as, as the tradition is.

• 8:30Speaker 05

  Couldn't believe.

• 8:31Speaker 03

  I couldn't believe.

• 8:32Speaker 04

  And you won an Ironman, didn't you, for that?

• 8:34Speaker 03

  Yes, I did. I got a Huel sponsorship off the basis of the fact that I lifted Pierre up.

• 8:38Speaker 04

  Hardest geezer.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  It was, it was extraordinary.

• 8:40Speaker 05

  Oh, man.

• 8:41Speaker 03

  And it could, yeah, it was also not long enough. It couldn't last. Listener, this episode of Finn vs History is brought to you by Surfshark.

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• 11:30Speaker 05

  Keep your data safe, and we'll see you next time. Goodbye.

• 11:33Speaker 03

  Anyway, so Operation Torch is, happens days after Monty's victory at Alamein.

• 11:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:41Speaker 03

  And this is the Americans arriving in North Africa in what would be, I guess, French North Africa.

• 11:47Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 11:47Speaker 04

  Bloody hell.

• 11:48Speaker 03

  Which the Germans, now, when, is that Vichy French North Africa?

• 11:53Speaker 05

  Yes, it is.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  So have the Germans controlled it?

• 11:55Speaker 04

  Unless it's Casablanca.

• 11:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:56Speaker 04

  The film Casablanca would be...

• 11:57Speaker 05

  That kind of thing.

• 11:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:58Speaker 05

  They actually land non-Vichy French generals secretly and kind of go in and try and say, "Come on, lads. The Americans are about to land. Just fucking come over to the good boys. Be good boys."

• 12:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:13Speaker 05

  And they have some generals who are like, "No, that's dishonorable." And they go, "Okay, well, we're kidnapping you then."

• 12:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:22Speaker 05

  And there is a bit of fighting. But ultimately, a lot of the French do just go, "Okay."

• 12:28Speaker 03

  And is this, is Patton leading Operation Torch at this point?

• 12:31Speaker 05

  I'm not sure.

• 12:32Speaker 03

  Because Patton is in Italy, is he?

• 12:34Speaker 05

  Patton is the big boy with Sicily, so I'm...

• 12:36Speaker 03

  Yes, he would be, because this is the ultimate, the long road to Operation Husky.

• 12:40Speaker 05

  The Yanks, the Yanks have a bad time at Kasserine Pass.

• 12:45Speaker 03

  Sorry, go on. The tanks have a bad time.

• 12:46Speaker 04

  At Kasserine Pass. They haven't fought

• 12:48Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 12:49Speaker 04

  A modern war before.

• 12:50Speaker 03

  That's Rommel fucks them up.

• 12:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:52Speaker 03

  At Kasserine Pass. So where's that? Is that Tunisia?

• 12:54Speaker 04

  I think so.

• 12:55Speaker 03

  So just to get the jokes beat up, Rommel has retreated from Egypt back into Libya and then Monty is pursuing, which is the great thing that we didn't do in Compass or Crusader. One of the other earlier operations before Monty arrived, we didn't

• 13:09Speaker 04

  Chase.

• 13:10Speaker 03

  Remember, we didn't chase them back across the desert, which allowed them to regroup.

• 13:13Speaker 04

  Complacent.

• 13:13Speaker 03

  We sent stuff to Crete, maybe. I can't remember why. Anyway, this time, they're not making that mistake again. Monty just goes after them thousands of miles across Libya and pushes them into what would be Tunisia, where the Americans have landed.

• 13:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:30Speaker 03

  And they're basically pinching them, which I suppose, you know, you could say that Al-Alemany was pointless if the Americans were landing and they just would have had to go up to where Rommel was.

• 13:40Speaker 04

  Well, they could look, the Germans, Rommel could have technically broken through Monty's line if there was a collapse from the British and then taking the Suez Canal.

• 13:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:48Speaker 04

  And then you also have the French Syrian.

• 13:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:51Speaker 04

  So then it would be one front potentially.

• 13:52Speaker 05

  The sheer amount of men and equipment they lost is the point, right? Because they could have, if they just waited for the Americans to arrive and Rommel had retreated in good order.

• 14:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:01Speaker 05

  We're talking, I mean, there's what, 300,000 Italians? Prisoners of war we disposed of, an enormous amount of German prisoners of war. Had to leave so many tanks behind, the ones that we didn't blow up. That could all have just been shipped back to Europe.

• 14:13Speaker 04

  Where are these 100,000 horny Italian guys? Because that's what I'm worried about.

• 14:16Speaker 03

  They are horny. We haven't talked about how horny they are.

• 14:18Speaker 04

  These are horny blokes and they're probably being stuck. It's like a war crime because they don't have escorts.

• 14:24Speaker 03

  Charlie, what have you Googled?

• 14:25Speaker 07

  How loud would it be if 300,000 Italian men cried at the same time?

• 14:29Speaker 04

  Let's get the decibels.

• 14:30Speaker 03

  Extreme acoustic level, a high-powered gunshot.

• 14:32Speaker 07

  Close-range fireworks or a top-fuel dragster is 300,000 Italian crying men.

• 14:38Speaker 04

  Surprisingly little in a way.

• 14:39Speaker 03

  I don't feel like they've got a grip on it. They are Italian. AI open doesn't.

• 14:43Speaker 04

  What, three Italians crying is like a gunshot?

• 14:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:47Speaker 07

  And are they making the same noise or is it kind of a radio?

• 14:50Speaker 03

  No, they're throwing themselves on the ground. It's messy. It's messy.

• 14:55Speaker 05

  But that's the whole point, right? It's attrition.

• 14:57Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 14:57Speaker 05

  So if you just wait for the angst to show up and scare everyone, then you're just going, oh, well, let's just make, allow the enemy to concentrate themselves. Where it's already hard enough to get rid of them.

• 15:07Speaker 03

  So, yeah, so Rommel fights quite a good regard. Action fucks the Americans up at Kasserim Pass. Do you know anything about what actually happened there?

• 15:16Speaker 04

  Was this because Americans are new to the war base?

• 15:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, they, they, they didn't quite.

• 15:20Speaker 03

  Is this their first action in Europe?

• 15:22Speaker 05

  Well, in, in the European theatre, yeah.

• 15:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, like a baby deer, just fucking.

• 15:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, they got a lot of tanks knocked out because they did just go down a pass and just got anti-tank to fucking bits.

• 15:31Speaker 04

  Are we in the territory of the first American foreign intervention? It must have been on this line.

• 15:37Speaker 03

  We nearly are, yeah. Not quite Tunisia, it would have been.

• 15:41Speaker 04

  This was, you said it was in Tunisia, I believe.

• 15:42Speaker 05

  The shores of Tripoli.

• 15:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:44Speaker 05

  You're asking about?

• 15:45Speaker 03

  Barbary pirates.

• 15:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 15:46Speaker 03

  First US Barbary War.

• 15:48Speaker 04

  That's it, in slavery.

• 15:49Speaker 03

  Well, actually, it was actually white slavery, yeah. Algiers, and so maybe it was, it was about the same, yeah, it was.

• 15:54Speaker 05

  They must have been thinking, yeah, we've been here before.

• 15:57Speaker 03

  So maybe 130 years after, the first American intervention in the Middle East.

• 16:02Speaker 04

  But there was like quite.

• 16:02Speaker 03

  Or North Africa, rather.

• 16:03Speaker 04

  There's like, there's some mythology about the daring, kind of, kind of Delta Team style.

• 16:09Speaker 05

  Marines.

• 16:10Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 16:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:11Speaker 03

  Decatur.

• 16:12Speaker 04

  I wonder if that was part of their whole mythology going into North Africa.

• 16:16Speaker 03

  Now, it says here in the script that Operation Torch renders Monty's victory at El Alamein strategically unnecessary. I refute that entirely.

• 16:25Speaker 04

  I think I do as well.

• 16:26Speaker 03

  I think the Americans, at this point, they only knew, has the Battle of Midway happened?

• 16:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, it must have, yeah. It's almost earlier than I, I thought it was later.

• 16:35Speaker 03

  Earlier on, yeah. So that all they know is the Pacific Ocean at this point, so.

• 16:39Speaker 04

  Which they dominated, to be fair to them.

• 16:41Speaker 03

  Anyway, so Rommel's Axis forces are surrounded, so they basically just constantly withdraw. And then it gets to the point where they have to surrender because they cut off Rommel's planned route of retreat. So the Eighth Army coordinate with the Americans, which is quite a funny story of the SAS boys trying to link, like, the SAS guys are. Constantly doing these like insane.

• 17:08Speaker 03

  They're basically hardest. I mean, they're hardest geezering it in the desert.

• 17:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:12Speaker 03

  And, and they're just trying to, they're like following the stars and finding, I'm pretty, I'm hopefully, I'm going to bump into some Americans.

• 17:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, recognizing a dune.

• 17:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, and they, they stumble up. There's a story of like, they go behind Rommel's lines and they, like, they haven't drunk water for four days and they're about, they really, you know, their feet are cut to shit. And it turns out it's Senegalese French troops.

• 17:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:31Speaker 03

  Because they're, because they're involved as well.

• 17:33Speaker 04

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 17:34Speaker 03

  Um, so they eventually link up, they squeeze Rommel out and he, uh, there's some minor battles in Tunisia. And then, uh, eventually he is recalled to Germany by Hitler in March forty-three to save the humiliation of him having to surrender.

• 17:49Speaker 04

  So this is quite a long period because the second battle of Alamein was mid.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  November, end of November. So it's, yeah, a good four or five month retreat.

• 17:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:57Speaker 03

  Eventually they're surrounded in Tunisia in May forty-three, which is, leads to the widespread surrenders and this big old victory parties with palm trees. And North Africa is liberated from Axis control in May forty-three.

• 18:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:11Speaker 03

  Huge.

• 18:12Speaker 04

  That's a big shit.

• 18:13Speaker 03

  A theatre has closed down.

• 18:15Speaker 04

  Oh, you love theatre.

• 18:16Speaker 03

  I love theatre's closing down.

• 18:17Speaker 04

  You're like Cromwell.

• 18:20Speaker 03

  I am. My favourite part of Covid, theatre shop, brilliant.

• 18:25Speaker 03

  You know, again, baby bathwater. So attention to Rommel, uh, is taken to Germany. Attention now turns to Sicily. And the, now this was Churchill's great hope for liberating Europe, wasn't it? Was going through, as you say, the soft underbelly.

• 18:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, but what was this whole thing about why go at the foot and why not strike at the knee? Was that whole thing about potentially go, landing in the mid?

• 18:49Speaker 03

  Fucking off Sicily and going to Rome, basically.

• 18:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. And he didn't do that. So I don't know why, that quote.

• 18:54Speaker 05

  He had lots of ideas.

• 18:55Speaker 04

  Yes. And always in great soundbites.

• 18:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 18:57Speaker 03

  Monty gets tasked with going up the Adriatic coast of Italy, the eastern side of the heel, which is the gnarly side.

• 19:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 19:06Speaker 03

  So Avalanche, which is the western side, that's, it's actually, it's quite gnarly fighting because there's no infrastructure.

• 19:14Speaker 03

  Structure and it's all just rock. There is no infrastructure.

• 19:17Speaker 05

  In the south, it is just like the 1300s.

• 19:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:20Speaker 04

  Everyone's still farming with sickles. The mafia, like.

• 19:23Speaker 05

  They just have sickles.

• 19:24Speaker 04

  My mum, I think, went to Sicily like a couple of months ago and that there's this beautiful old theatre that cannot afford to put any productions on. Cause if they put any production on, they have to pay so many of the mafia off. They can't make any of the money back. So nothing gets made. There's also, there's so many roads that just stop or bridges half built because the amount of corruption. They've been giving enough money to build a bridge, but the amount of money being taken by the mafia means that they can only build half the bridge.

• 19:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:48Speaker 04

  Cause everyone takes their cut.

• 19:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:49Speaker 04

  So I imagine it's that sort of stuff.

• 19:51Speaker 03

  So basically, Monty has quite.

• 19:53Speaker 04

  Sorry, this is, we did this in the mafia series. This is when loads of the Italian Americans.

• 19:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:58Speaker 04

  Oh, like they have like a badge on for fucking Lucky Luciano and stuff. They're like, they, they wear like an LL or something.

• 20:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. This is, this is the birth of the Americano.

• 20:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:08Speaker 03

  We should place this. Forty-three.

• 20:10Speaker 04

  Forty-three. Do you want to do another placing?

• 20:11Speaker 03

  Come on. Yeah, you nailed it last time. Uh, let's take.

• 20:13Speaker 04

  Any two dates.

• 20:14Speaker 03

  Operation Huskies went in forty, is it July forty-three? Is it in the summer? I can't remember.

• 20:18Speaker 05

  Summer.

• 20:19Speaker 04

  Before and after.

• 20:20Speaker 05

  Okay, this is after Bruce Forsyth's 21st birthday.

• 20:26Speaker 03

  Christ, he's just pulled that off the dome. It's after his 21st birthday.

• 20:30Speaker 05

  Bruce Forsyth is older than 21, I think.

• 20:32Speaker 04

  And is he shagging a lot at 21?

• 20:34Speaker 03

  Bruce Forsyth was up, was 21 during Operation Husky.

• 20:38Speaker 05

  I think so.

• 20:39Speaker 03

  Christ.

• 20:39Speaker 04

  He's, he was so old.

• 20:42Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 20:43Speaker 04

  This is tight. This is tight.

• 20:44Speaker 05

  It's tight. No.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  How, how old's Bruce Forsyth in forty-three?

• 20:48Speaker 07

  He would be fifteen.

• 20:49Speaker 05

  Fifteen.

• 20:51Speaker 04

  So it's before, it's after his 14th birthday.

• 20:53Speaker 07

  After his first wank.

• 20:54Speaker 03

  Before he became legal, before he became legal.

• 20:58Speaker 05

  Barely legal Bruce Forsyth. You don't want that coming up on the old history search.

• 21:02Speaker 03

  Barely legal Bruce Forsyth. That's fine.

• 21:04Speaker 05

  And I guess it's.

• 21:05Speaker 03

  That's fine. Yeah. And it's, it's, so it's before Bruce Forsyth became legal.

• 21:12Speaker 04

  But it's after.

• 21:14Speaker 03

  It's after.

• 21:14Speaker 04

  But it's after.

• 21:17Speaker 07

  Has he got, oh wait, I've got one.

• 21:18Speaker 03

  Go on Charlie. Charlie likes to rhyme them.

• 21:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's gonna be something fucking stupid.

• 21:23Speaker 07

  Cause it might be.

• 21:24Speaker 04

  No, he's not. So why would he be circumcised?

• 21:26Speaker 07

  Bruce Forsyth. I don't.

• 21:27Speaker 04

  I don't see Bruce Forsyth, but oh right. Yeah.

• 21:31Speaker 03

  Is Bruce Forsyth circumcised? There is no public information available.

• 21:36Speaker 07

  Well, it's after. He may have been circumcised this before he, um.

• 21:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:39Speaker 07

  He became legal.

• 21:40Speaker 03

  God, it's messy. It's absolutely, it's messy stuff.

• 21:43Speaker 04

  Alright.

• 21:44Speaker 03

  Anyway.

• 21:44Speaker 04

  Well, now we know.

• 21:45Speaker 03

  Barely, we can't know. We can't know. Barely legal Bruce Forsyth, um, is around when Operation Husky starts.

• 21:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:53Speaker 03

  Now, Rommel gets assigned to, uh, try and defend Italy from the incoming invasion. He has differing ideas with, uh, Field Marshal Kesselring.

• 22:03Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 22:04Speaker 03

  Kesselring wants to defend the whole of Italy. Rommel, uh, who I think is rarely wrong, uh, decides that there is no point trying to defend the south because it's a fucking pudding and who cares?

• 22:16Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 22:16Speaker 03

  So let's just pull all our lines above Rome and use the, uh, territory of the Alps and the mountains north.

• 22:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:22Speaker 03

  To hold them off, which they eventually do, but Hitler doesn't like that and he goes for Kesselring's strategy. Which means that the south is, the south of Italy is pretty gnarly fighting.

• 22:32Speaker 04

  So is Rommel in Italy?

• 22:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. Rommel and Monty are both in Italy.

• 22:36Speaker 04

  So they, they do North Africa, Italy and Normandy?

• 22:38Speaker 03

  They follow each other around. That's why, that's why we're doing this series.

• 22:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. And then at the end, they, they came so near to just finally kissing.

• 22:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. They never actually met. Would you know when the, the nearest point they met? So obviously they start in 1940, they, they fight in.

• 22:53Speaker 04

  Geographically, the closest they were must have been Normandy.

• 22:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. Monty goes up the eastern side, which is, they have quite a tough time going up the eastern side. This is where Patton's involved and he does not like General Patton.

• 23:04Speaker 05

  No.

• 23:04Speaker 03

  We don't, I mean, basically, Italy becomes a stalemate. When do they get knocked out of the war? Is it 43?

• 23:10Speaker 05

  It's debatable because you've got like the Republic of, the Kingdom of Southern Italy, or whatever, the Republic of Southern Italy that the Allies kind of make up.

• 23:18Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:19Speaker 05

  They want to bring all the Italian POWs and, and non-aligned Italians into the war. And, and they do fight.

• 23:25Speaker 03

  Because they, they can't afford to keep them prisoners.

• 23:27Speaker 04

  At least some of the British prisoner of war they got from North Africa.

• 23:31Speaker 05

  Some of them, yeah.

• 23:32Speaker 03

  There's half a million men to look after, to babysit.

• 23:34Speaker 05

  And it's better.

• 23:35Speaker 03

  Italians.

• 23:36Speaker 05

  They would do them, they would do things like send 20,000 of them to just dig an entirely new harbor at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands.

• 23:43Speaker 04

  Too busy.

• 23:43Speaker 03

  In Orkney.

• 23:44Speaker 05

  They, my, my grandmother would tell me, she was from the Orkneys, and she would say like, yeah, there's all these like Italians like just having to like do this horrible freezing cold.

• 23:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:54Speaker 05

  Like pouring concrete and trying to repair Scapa Flow from when the Germans blew it up.

• 23:58Speaker 03

  Christ.

• 23:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, a lot of labour.

• 24:00Speaker 03

  But this is, this is, this is the, it's this division, the Southern Italy, where the Allies basically, yeah, they, they don't really want the new country to manage. This is where the mafia becomes so powerful again. It's because they, they just take over.

• 24:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:13Speaker 03

  Because the Americans are like, whatever, you run it if you're the guy.

• 24:15Speaker 05

  They're willing to say, look, we'll just make people go away.

• 24:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:18Speaker 05

  Because we are fine with that and you're not.

• 24:21Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 24:21Speaker 05

  Well, your supplies will be left alone.

• 24:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. So Rommel does, I think he does quite a good job in defending the northern or the.

• 24:30Speaker 05

  The Gothic line.

• 24:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:31Speaker 05

  The line of mountains just south of Rome, like Monte Cassino and all that.

• 24:34Speaker 03

  Now, Monte Cassino, we'll, we'll get into that separately. Anyway, let's, well, there's too much of Italy to go through really, but basically by early 44, they're both pulled out of Italy. Because it's time for the, for D-Day, for the big push.

• 24:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:50Speaker 03

  From the Allies to win the war in Europe. Monty is assigned as the commander of the 21st Army Group. So he's responsible for controlling two separate field armies. Now, Pierre, you have a very good grasp of like army terminology and scale.

• 25:07Speaker 05

  This is tough though.

• 25:08Speaker 03

  Compared to us.

• 25:09Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  And our listeners, and compared, and our listeners.

• 25:12Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 25:12Speaker 03

  Who are thick.

• 25:13Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 25:14Speaker 03

  And smelly and sad.

• 25:16Speaker 05

  Very sad.

• 25:17Speaker 03

  Very sad. What is a, how big is a field army?

• 25:21Speaker 05

  It's a full army on its own. So it has its own detachments of like artillery, infantry, armour, maybe even an attached wing from an air force.

• 25:32Speaker 03

  So when you talk about like Monty's Eighth Army, is that a field army?

• 25:34Speaker 05

  That's a whole army. Yeah, that's a field army.

• 25:36Speaker 03

  So he's controlling two entire field armies.

• 25:39Speaker 04

  Two British armies.

• 25:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, so those will be Commonwealth.

• 25:41Speaker 04

  Commonwealth.

• 25:42Speaker 03

  So this could be.

• 25:43Speaker 04

  And then what's Eisenhower controlling?

• 25:46Speaker 05

  Oh, the whole thing. He's the supreme commander of Europe.

• 25:49Speaker 04

  And then is Patton doing?

• 25:51Speaker 05

  Patton has fucked everyone off so much by this point that they make him not do D-Day and his job is to drive around East Anglia, waving him some Jeeps and stuff as part of the pretend army that's going to attack Calais. They're making him do the pretending thing with all the inflatable tanks and things.

• 26:07Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 26:08Speaker 05

  They got so fucking sick of him because he went and he bullied that guy in the hospital. Patton showed up and was visiting troops in the hospital and there was a guy there with like terrible shell shock and he just started chanting at him. You started screaming at him and hitting him with sticks and things. Yeah, he went mad at him and everyone was like, oh Jesus, even for you, this is bad. So his punishment kind of was to drive around East Anglia saluting rubber tanks that someone had inflated.

• 26:30Speaker 03

  That's very funny.

• 26:31Speaker 05

  So everyone was like, we've seen him, Patton's here. And the Germans were like, he is too crazy to be wasted on inflatable tanks. It must be real.

• 26:39Speaker 03

  We talked about this in the previous episodes in that Britain at this point is doing so much am dram.

• 26:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 26:43Speaker 03

  In the desert.

• 26:45Speaker 04

  We're using more am dram than any other nation. No one else is doing it. Japan's not doing it.

• 26:48Speaker 03

  The Russians aren't tapping into the am dram.

• 26:50Speaker 05

  But these are our cultural skills.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 26:53Speaker 05

  Autists.

• 26:54Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 26:54Speaker 05

  Am dram.

• 26:55Speaker 03

  Hobbyists.

• 26:56Speaker 05

  Big shorts.

• 26:57Speaker 03

  Big shorts. This is what wins the war. Charts, big shorts, amateur dramatics.

• 27:02Speaker 05

  Yeah. Navy.

• 27:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, the Monty's autism, I mean, D-Day is probably one of the high points of autistic preparation.

• 27:11Speaker 05

  Definitely.

• 27:11Speaker 03

  The scale of it.

• 27:12Speaker 05

  Unbelievable.

• 27:13Speaker 03

  I mean, how many?

• 27:14Speaker 04

  I mean, Dad at an airport scaled up.

• 27:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, to infinity. It's the endpoint of.

• 27:19Speaker 04

  Have you got your passports?

• 27:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:20Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 27:21Speaker 03

  And by that, have you got your landing craft?

• 27:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:23Speaker 03

  Have they got fuel? Have they got maps? Are the maps laminated to protect themselves from the water?

• 27:28Speaker 04

  You didn't need passports to go into.

• 27:30Speaker 03

  D-Day?

• 27:31Speaker 04

  D-Day. There was no border control. I guess there was.

• 27:34Speaker 03

  Probably out these days though. Trying to fucking, trying to get into Tenerife, fingerprints. Christ, please stay. It'd be easier with D-Day.

• 27:41Speaker 04

  An amphibious landing.

• 27:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, I prefer it. I might, the queue was probably was worse than fucking being shot out of a bunker. Genuinely disgrace. The new EU exit controls were disgrace.

• 27:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:54Speaker 03

  Anyway, so yeah, Monty, they put, because he's so meticulous, they put him in charge of planning. Is it the, is it all the larger, is it all the landing areas?

• 28:03Speaker 05

  Just his two armies, right?

• 28:04Speaker 03

  Is it an army, is it a field army per beach?

• 28:08Speaker 05

  Unsure. I know he's the one who argued for much wider landing areas and like a much bigger, broader front as opposed to like a little cove or something. Like he was very keen on.

• 28:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, like spreading it.

• 28:19Speaker 05

  We need to really land.

• 28:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:22Speaker 05

  Otherwise they'll just push us into the sea.

• 28:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. And fascinatingly, it is Rommel, I didn't know this, who, he is tasked with building the defenses.

• 28:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:33Speaker 03

  For the D-Day landings.

• 28:35Speaker 05

  Yes, which is kind of a punishment as well, I think, because like a lot of the troops as well on D-Day are like ost troops, like conscripted, random Eastern Europeans and wounded regiments from the eastern front and stuff. They kind of don't think it's going to happen.

• 28:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:49Speaker 05

  Or if they do, they think, yeah, well, you're just a guy in a bunker.

• 28:51Speaker 03

  And is this because the, the, like, the height of the Wehrmacht is in, is still in Russia?

• 28:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's elite Panzer regiments like waiting to push into the beaches if they do land, but the actual troops there, like, there's a lot of like.

• 29:05Speaker 03

  Because by the time they actually get to like, they cross the Rhine, everyone's a teenager.

• 29:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:10Speaker 03

  And it's terrifying.

• 29:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:11Speaker 03

  The, but the, I read the Ben McIntyre SAS book.

• 29:14Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 29:15Speaker 04

  Depends what you're into, I guess.

• 29:15Speaker 03

  Eh?

• 29:16Speaker 04

  Depends what you're into.

• 29:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:17Speaker 04

  There's a barely legal Bruce Forsen.

• 29:21Speaker 03

  Yes, I suppose. There's an argument that maybe Monty would have really liked to cross the Rhine.

• 29:26Speaker 03

  But we'll get, we'll get to that. But yeah, the, I mean, it's like teen, a teenage German boy would come out with his hands up and then just basically fucking jihad and just blow himself up.

• 29:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:35Speaker 03

  In front of, and just take out allied troops. It's pretty gnarly. Anyway, Rommel, mate, Rommel's asparagus.

• 29:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:43Speaker 03

  Talk us through what that is.

• 29:44Speaker 05

  It's a big stick that you jam into the beach and it stops landing craft.

• 29:48Speaker 04

  It was disappointing when I saw it. I thought it would be more exciting.

• 29:51Speaker 05

  It sounds pretty exotic.

• 29:52Speaker 03

  I mean, I bet it's piss stank.

• 29:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:54Speaker 03

  Having been on Speed in the Desert for 18 months.

• 29:56Speaker 05

  Oh, like engine oil.

• 29:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, but yeah, so that that kind of iconic Saving Private Ryan opening scene with all the.

• 30:02Speaker 04

  Those Romulus asparagus?

• 30:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:04Speaker 04

  Did he come up with that in, or did he just?

• 30:07Speaker 05

  I think they just nicked it.

• 30:07Speaker 04

  Get someone.

• 30:08Speaker 03

  It's not, it's not, I reckon we just shove a fucking.

• 30:10Speaker 04

  I would have thought of it.

• 30:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:11Speaker 04

  I would have.

• 30:12Speaker 03

  Shove some scrap metal on the beach, maybe really annoying. But he also is in charge of the whole bunker at the Atlantic Wall.

• 30:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 30:19Speaker 03

  But I don't think he's getting enough money or time or resources to build it properly.

• 30:23Speaker 05

  Concrete, you need concrete factories and it's all, it's.

• 30:26Speaker 03

  So like.

• 30:27Speaker 04

  Could you build a wall on the, on the actual shore? Build a massive wall.

• 30:32Speaker 03

  It's a bit of a Charlie question, that. Can you build a wall on the beach?

• 30:36Speaker 04

  Just, yeah. I'm just trying to think if they, they could have done more. If you have some time to prepare a beach.

• 30:42Speaker 05

  It'd be interesting to see like the plans for what it should have been like when it was finished, because it was horrifying enough as it was.

• 30:46Speaker 03

  Well, I did.

• 30:47Speaker 04

  Also, they didn't know that, where was the main preparations? Were they, were they planning for Calais?

• 30:51Speaker 05

  They were still very worried about Calais.

• 30:53Speaker 04

  What was the most offended part of the coast?

• 30:55Speaker 03

  Point, right? They're going for the narrowest point and actually it's not Normandy. But there is one mega cannon or a couple that the Nazis built. You're gonna like this.

• 31:05Speaker 04

  A Nazi mega cannon.

• 31:06Speaker 03

  A Nazi mega cannon, you know, because by this point in the war, it's the V2 era. The Nazis, let's not forget, have gone to space.

• 31:13Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 31:13Speaker 03

  So.

• 31:14Speaker 04

  Wunderwaffen.

• 31:14Speaker 03

  Exactly, right? The wonder weapons. So there's a massive mega cannon basically just pointed at London from fucking Calais. Just Route One, just fuck off. I don't think they ever fired it. I watched a video of James Holland's. I was having, go through a tough time. I watched a video of James Holland inside a mega cannon going, wow!

• 31:35Speaker 04

  I watched a video of his wife.

• 31:36Speaker 03

  Amanda was out, Amanda was out.

• 31:37Speaker 04

  Please come home.

• 31:38Speaker 03

  Please.

• 31:40Speaker 03

  Anyway, so Rommel also oversaw all these minefields, because that's what he'd done in North Africa. But he set all the traps to try and funnel the Allies into kill zones. So I guess is this, you know, with what we know about how Monty beats Rommel, how does? How did the Allies get through? Like, is it preparation?

• 32:00Speaker 05

  Yeah. Overwhelming naval bombardment.

• 32:03Speaker 03

  Just numbers, sheer numbers, resources.

• 32:05Speaker 04

  And now, is it true, we talked about this maybe on another episode, that Monty's was so much into rehearsing it, he rehearsed so many, there's so much training for D-Day and most of it was in like Cornwall in terrible weather.

• 32:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:16Speaker 04

  More people died in the training for D-Day on Monty's side than in actual D-Day.

• 32:22Speaker 05

  There was some big disaster.

• 32:23Speaker 03

  Off his two armies? There was a...

• 32:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think loads of people died, like 2,000 people died in Cornwall. That's something crazy.

• 32:29Speaker 05

  A bunch of ships capsized, the landing craft capsized, it was a big...

• 32:32Speaker 04

  And like the weather was awful. How many of you died in?

• 32:35Speaker 07

  Um, 749.

• 32:37Speaker 04

  Exized Tiger.

• 32:38Speaker 03

  Oh, that's Exized Tiger. So that's, I mean, Lyme Bay in St. Devon, I know, German torpedo boats ambushed the convoy and friendly fire had just took place.

• 32:48Speaker 07

  As a joke?

• 32:49Speaker 03

  Not, what do you mean as a joke?

• 32:54Speaker 07

  Like, why would they do that?

• 32:55Speaker 03

  We were at war with the Germans.

• 32:57Speaker 07

  But the Americans are doing it, aren't they?

• 32:58Speaker 03

  What?

• 32:59Speaker 07

  I thought the Americans just shot at the English people.

• 33:01Speaker 05

  No.

• 33:01Speaker 03

  Because German torpedo boats ambushed the convoy and then they got confused and friendly fire happened.

• 33:07Speaker 07

  I misunderstood.

• 33:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. As a joke.

• 33:09Speaker 04

  As a joke.

• 33:10Speaker 05

  As a joke!

• 33:11Speaker 03

  Guys!

• 33:15Speaker 00

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• 33:44Speaker 01

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• 33:59Speaker 05

  It's preparation, it's a huge naval bombardment, it's, it's the airborne a- aspect.

• 34:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:04Speaker 05

  Surprise.

• 34:05Speaker 04

  But they.

• 34:06Speaker 05

  French Resistance.

• 34:06Speaker 04

  They planned for 20,000 people to die in D-Day. They just said, look, probably this. And only a quarter of that dead.

• 34:14Speaker 03

  Really? Is it only 4,000 Allies dying?

• 34:16Speaker 05

  About that, yeah.

• 34:18Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 34:18Speaker 05

  It's less than you think, more casualties, but I think that's deaths. So, yeah.

• 34:21Speaker 04

  And the worst one was that Omaha Beach, Sir Brian Ryan. Is that the most kind of cinematic?

• 34:25Speaker 03

  I think, I think a lot of them are actually fine.

• 34:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, because we don't see the other ones. Omaha Beach is all the video games, everything.

• 34:32Speaker 05

  There was one of them, maybe it was Sword or Gold. It was one of the Commonwealth ones where, you know, there's like French.

• 34:37Speaker 03

  Canadians got a bit fucked up, didn't they?

• 34:38Speaker 05

  The Canadians had a bad time at Juneau Beach. That was not nice. They had to really employ flamethrowers to get through that. But there was one.

• 34:45Speaker 04

  And they're probably apologising while they do it as well.

• 34:47Speaker 03

  Employ flamethrowers.

• 34:48Speaker 05

  These are the hockey.

• 34:48Speaker 03

  We need to employ flamethrowers.

• 34:50Speaker 05

  Hockey Canadians.

• 34:52Speaker 04

  Fucking Hojer.

• 34:54Speaker 05

  Going full, full ice rink.

• 34:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:57Speaker 05

  There was one where you see photos of it and like there's German machine gun emplacements and stuff. But it's one of those French seaside towns where it's like beach, the road, all the buildings.

• 35:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:07Speaker 05

  Like there's no gap at all. And so it's weird. You're like attacking on a beach immediately into a town. With all like the signs that you get from video games of like whatever Bernard's Cafe or whatever.

• 35:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 35:18Speaker 05

  Casino or something.

• 35:20Speaker 03

  I think I prefer that.

• 35:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think so, rather than the bunker thing.

• 35:23Speaker 03

  So, so Rommel is basically is, is running the defences, but obviously D-Day's a success for the Allies. They establish a, a, a bridgehead. Careful, ladies, careful. Now, Rommel, at some point, he's in the south of France. This is what maybe is this, is this in later in June? Oh, it's in July. So he's in the south of France and he gets critically wounded by, his, his car gets strafed by Allied aircraft. The driver dies. He's basically taken out of the war.

• 36:00Speaker 05

  So he's. You'd want to know if you were the pilot that you fucking got it.

• 36:03Speaker 03

  Shot Rommel, but he's still alive, right? But then we get to one of the most devastating moments of the war. Operation Valkyrie.

• 36:14Speaker 03

  This is treachery beyond belief.

• 36:18Speaker 04

  Junus!

• 36:20Speaker 03

  A bunch of snakes.

• 36:22Speaker 04

  You're all Hitler on Facebook Live. You're all snakes!

• 36:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:26Speaker 05

  Just posting, "Days like today, you know who your real friends are." Everyone commenting, "Hope you're okay, babes."

• 36:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. July 20th, 1944. Now, as we mentioned in the first episode, the German military had this sort of Prussian aristocratic heritage. And so a lot of these conservative, conservative Prussians, who basically saw the oncoming collapse that Germany would have. And they were like, "We've got to assassinate Hitler and overthrow the Nazis."

• 37:00Speaker 05

  These are German telegraph readers.

• 37:02Speaker 03

  Yes, and they're not Nazis.

• 37:03Speaker 05

  And they never, they never liked Hitler.

• 37:05Speaker 03

  No.

• 37:06Speaker 05

  They called him a bohemian corporal. As in, as in from, from Bohemia.

• 37:10Speaker 03

  Hitler's a bohemian.

• 37:11Speaker 05

  He's a hippie.

• 37:12Speaker 03

  He's been to, he's been to India. He's got beads for a door.

• 37:18Speaker 05

  Adolf Hitler's Lonely Hearts. Like that album he released.

• 37:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, Adolf Hitler's Lonely Hearts. He's playing a sitar. Anyway, he's got incense, he's burning incense. He's burning many things.

• 37:30Speaker 05

  Holocorma.

• 37:31Speaker 03

  Thank you, Charlie. Yeah. She's deflated, Pierre. Now, now, a bunch of officers, what's one of them called? I've forgotten. Can you remember the names of it?

• 37:44Speaker 05

  Von Stauffenberg is the main one.

• 37:45Speaker 03

  That's Stauffenberg, that's the main one. Cloud von Stauffenberg.

• 37:47Speaker 05

  A lot of Vons, because that's the aristocrats.

• 37:49Speaker 03

  Exactly. Oh, these are all the Prussian guys. So they have this plot to assassinate Hitler. Now, eventually, a bomb goes off in his East Prussian headquarters.

• 37:58Speaker 05

  They've got a comedy exploding briefcase.

• 37:59Speaker 03

  Basically, yeah. It's Mission Impossible stuff. And I think-

• 38:04Speaker 05

  Does the bomb properly go off, though?

• 38:05Speaker 03

  It does.

• 38:07Speaker 05

  But someone moved it.

• 38:07Speaker 03

  Someone moved it and Hitler is not in the room when it goes off. So it kills someone, doesn't it?

• 38:12Speaker 05

  It kills one or two people. It deafens and wounds a whole lot of others. But someone moved it behind the table they're meeting at. It's some kind of insane, like Bond villain reinforced steel table. And someone moved it onto the other side of the table from where Hitler was and behind the leg.

• 38:26Speaker 03

  And is that because they knew what was in it?

• 38:28Speaker 05

  No, they were just like, "Oh, there was some tidying."

• 38:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:30Speaker 04

  It looks like a bomb's gone off in here.

• 38:35Speaker 05

  Someone left a big clock inside this briefcase.

• 38:39Speaker 03

  It did make him deaf in one ear, though, partially deaf in one ear.

• 38:42Speaker 05

  Yeah. You've got to tip away Hitler, bit by bit. Like a video game boss.

• 38:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:47Speaker 05

  You have to wait till he shows, he shows the underbelly with the big ruby and then you shoot that.

• 38:52Speaker 03

  So, yeah.

• 38:53Speaker 04

  Should shout out, Pierre does a great gaming podcast called Button Boys.

• 38:57Speaker 03

  Oh, we should shout out Button Boys, yeah, yeah. If you are a video game enthusiast, which, knowing this audience, you will be.

• 39:04Speaker 05

  Surely, if you love World War Two this much as well.

• 39:07Speaker 03

  Pierre does a great video game podcast called Button Boys, which you have a Patreon for as well.

• 39:12Speaker 05

  Yes, yeah, yeah. We've just interviewed SNL UK's George Four Acres about his horrifyingly detailed interest in Pokemon. I mean, you've no idea.

• 39:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, this.

• 39:23Speaker 05

  George Four Acres.

• 39:23Speaker 04

  Really?

• 39:24Speaker 05

  Oh, man.

• 39:24Speaker 03

  This is going to set off a lot of guys. I mean, a lot of guys are tizzing out for this.

• 39:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're rattling their cage now. You've upset them.

• 39:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right.

• 39:31Speaker 04

  They're gnashing their teeth.

• 39:32Speaker 03

  Let's get back to Operation Valkyrie to soothe them.

• 39:34Speaker 05

  Wait, so Von, what's his name, Von?

• 39:35Speaker 03

  Stauffenberg.

• 39:36Speaker 05

  Is Von Stauffenberg played by Tom Cruise?

• 39:38Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 39:38Speaker 05

  I don't mean to aim the gun at you. You're right, yeah, you're right. He's the Tom Cruise Nazi. Right, and Tom Cruise in that film has Tom Cruise's voice, right? Yes, they've just stuck with their own voices.

• 39:49Speaker 03

  And an eye patch?

• 39:50Speaker 05

  And an eye patch. And an eye patch. And does Von Stauffenberg look anything like Tom Cruise, Charlie?

• 39:55Speaker 05

  I think pretty close. Okay.

• 39:56Speaker 03

  Really?

• 39:58Speaker 05

  That's, I'm bet, I think so. I wonder maybe that's what you thought when he was about to get shot, maybe.

• 40:02Speaker 03

  Fair enough.

• 40:03Speaker 05

  Hope Tom Cruise plays me in the film one day.

• 40:05Speaker 03

  He's a good looking, he's a good looking guy.

• 40:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, fair play. Hot piece of ass.

• 40:09Speaker 03

  Now.

• 40:10Speaker 05

  Too sexy to plan a proper assassination.

• 40:13Speaker 03

  Hitler, you know.

• 40:15Speaker 05

  Von Stauffenberg. That's his problem.

• 40:18Speaker 03

  Hitler at this point, what's he wearing? Hitler at this point is getting quite paranoid, okay? He's got a lot going on.

• 40:25Speaker 05

  It's something to do with the war and the meth.

• 40:27Speaker 03

  Something to go on with the massive bomb.

• 40:29Speaker 05

  He's a hippie who smoked too much weed.

• 40:30Speaker 03

  Yes, he's a bohemian, he's a bohemian.

• 40:32Speaker 05

  This is Manson-era hippies.

• 40:34Speaker 03

  He's Charles Manson with a swastika on his forehead and his arm.

• 40:37Speaker 05

  He's like, the government are hiding stuff from us, man.

• 40:42Speaker 03

  You had a joke about Manson having a swastika on his forehead.

• 40:44Speaker 05

  I did.

• 40:45Speaker 03

  I think about that. You know, you used to get stuck with a joke in your head whenever I see Manson with a swastika on his face.

• 40:51Speaker 05

  What's the joke?

• 40:52Speaker 03

  I think of Pierre going, "We get it, Charles. You're unreasonable."

• 40:55Speaker 05

  You're unreasonable. It's such an overkill. Because he did it once, he'd been arrested.

• 40:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:00Speaker 05

  Ship's a sail, bud.

• 41:01Speaker 03

  Goes to court. And don't you even imagine his defence lawyer.

• 41:05Speaker 05

  So like, don't give, yeah, you haven't actually done any of the murders yourself, so this should be an easy, okay.

• 41:10Speaker 03

  Walks in with a swastika, "Right, okay, brilliant."

• 41:13Speaker 05

  In the jury system, is it?

• 41:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:16Speaker 05

  Good run, man. Try not to do any insane rambling, though. Oh.

• 41:21Speaker 03

  So, now, Operation Valkyrie causes Hitler to go on a bit of a, you know, it's not his finest moment.

• 41:29Speaker 05

  Go on.

• 41:29Speaker 03

  It's not Hitler's, he acts out. He lashes out. He acts rashly. And he starts to try-

• 41:36Speaker 05

  But male mental health hadn't really been talked about.

• 41:37Speaker 03

  As we keep saying. Hitler is the canary in the coal mine of male mental health. Okay?

• 41:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 41:46Speaker 03

  You know, he's the Fuhrer in the bunker. He's the canary in the coal mine.

• 41:49Speaker 05

  It wasn't normalized men talking about their feelings.

• 41:51Speaker 03

  No.

• 41:52Speaker 05

  No.

• 41:52Speaker 03

  And Hitler, by this point-

• 41:53Speaker 05

  It was taboo. It was massive taboo.

• 41:54Speaker 03

  He doesn't know who his friends are.

• 41:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:56Speaker 03

  You know?

• 41:58Speaker 05

  He's like Elvis or-

• 41:59Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 42:00Speaker 05

  Any number of other drug addicted, very powerful men.

• 42:03Speaker 03

  Exactly. It's either you're gonna blow your brains out or you're gonna eat so many burgers and die in the toilet. Right? That's all men have got at this point.

• 42:08Speaker 05

  At this point, yeah.

• 42:09Speaker 03

  At this point.

• 42:09Speaker 05

  Those are your two exits.

• 42:10Speaker 03

  Exactly. And they are also both my exits as well.

• 42:15Speaker 05

  Yeah. You're on the fence, but you've got time.

• 42:18Speaker 03

  I've got, yeah, yeah.

• 42:18Speaker 05

  Are you gonna double whammy?

• 42:20Speaker 03

  Eat so many burgers, big poo then blow my brains out.

• 42:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:24Speaker 03

  The Fuhrer Elvis double. The honorable, the most honorable suicide there is.

• 42:28Speaker 05

  The Adolf Presley.

• 42:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:29Speaker 05

  You're fucking wearing like a white suit with a hat.

• 42:32Speaker 03

  With a swastika on. The El- oh man, the Elvis suit with a swastika on it. That's a real-

• 42:37Speaker 05

  Shouldn't have brought that up.

• 42:37Speaker 03

  All right, Banksy.

• 42:38Speaker 05

  Shouldn't have brought that up.

• 42:38Speaker 03

  That's a real Goering. I can imagine Goering and an Elvis-

• 42:41Speaker 05

  He was wearing a white suit, wasn't he?

• 42:42Speaker 03

  But if you make it Vegas Elvis with a swastika.

• 42:45Speaker 04

  It's a Banksy.

• 42:46Speaker 03

  Do you know I'm gonna be wearing an Elvis, I'm gonna be wearing like Eddie Murphy, get up on my tour.

• 42:50Speaker 04

  Amazing.

• 42:50Speaker 05

  Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.

• 42:52Speaker 03

  I can't wear a sauce, anyway.

• 42:53Speaker 04

  You're gonna have to talk him up. I like you going like, oh fuck. Cause of fucking health and safety.

• 42:56Speaker 03

  Manson did it first. Oh, health and safety, yeah. Anyway, no. Oh, yes, because of the moral thing. Anyway. So Hitler goes mad and he says that, he goes on the radio and says, I'm fine, but I am, he says divine intervention spared him.

• 43:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:11Speaker 03

  And he goes on this brutal purge. Now Rommel gets implicated in it because a, one of the conspirators gets tortured and under questioning implicates Rommel, or maybe a couple of them.

• 43:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:24Speaker 05

  They had meetings with him.

• 43:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, now Rommel did not.

• 43:27Speaker 04

  What's your thoughts? Was he involved?

• 43:29Speaker 05

  They would have wanted him to take over because all the other people around Hitler have the same problems that they have with Hitler, which is that they're mad drug addicts.

• 43:37Speaker 04

  Right.

• 43:38Speaker 05

  And also they're not proper German officers.

• 43:40Speaker 04

  Okay. Yeah. Cause Rommel's.

• 43:42Speaker 05

  Rommel's the hero.

• 43:43Speaker 04

  Rommel's more army than he is Nazi.

• 43:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:45Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 43:46Speaker 05

  Eighty twenty.

• 43:47Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 43:48Speaker 05

  And also that like.

• 43:48Speaker 04

  But the army is a Nazi army.

• 43:50Speaker 05

  That's why they keep giving him shit.

• 43:51Speaker 03

  Fucking pedant.

• 43:53Speaker 05

  They keep giving him shit jobs. That's why they're like, Rommel's such like a heroic figure that Hitler, he's like probably the biggest popular threat.

• 44:00Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 44:01Speaker 05

  So it's like, well fuck off to Normandy and dig holes, you know?

• 44:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:04Speaker 05

  I'm not sending you to the Eastern Front where you can be even more of a bloody hero.

• 44:06Speaker 04

  He's like Captain Tom.

• 44:08Speaker 05

  Yes, in so many ways.

• 44:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's the original Captain Tom who was, by the way, fighting in this fight.

• 44:13Speaker 05

  The garden fox.

• 44:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:15Speaker 04

  I would admit.

• 44:18Speaker 04

  Admittedly. His blitzkrieg was a little slower.

• 44:22Speaker 03

  The Zimmerfrän fox, guard Captain Tom, outmaneuvering the lawn.

• 44:27Speaker 05

  Trying to outmaneuver his own family by going round and round.

• 44:31Speaker 03

  No, I'll tell you who's the real garden fox is his daughter.

• 44:33Speaker 04

  That's his real daughter. Garden fox.

• 44:35Speaker 03

  The spa, the home spa fox.

• 44:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:39Speaker 03

  She's the real Rommel of that family.

• 44:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 44:42Speaker 03

  Anyway, God bless. God bless Captain Tom.

• 44:45Speaker 04

  That's a good phrase. He's the Rommel of the family, would you say?

• 44:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. Now, evidence gathers that Rommel is implicated.

• 44:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:55Speaker 03

  But it's never really cleared up. But as you say, I guess he's the, he's the kind of Beckham. He's the celebrity of the German war effort.

• 45:02Speaker 04

  He's way too much of a threat.

• 45:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:04Speaker 04

  At some point he'd have had to go.

• 45:05Speaker 03

  But that means that the way they have to. Do you think it was?

• 45:07Speaker 04

  I think at some point he'd have had to go, yeah.

• 45:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:09Speaker 04

  Yeah. But the, the way they get rid of him has to be, um, seem accidental because he's so popular.

• 45:15Speaker 03

  Well, this is it. So what they do is now Rommel is recovering from being strafed by a fucking airplane. I mean, terrifying. Um, so he is, now he's set to be tried in a people's court, which is basically a sham court where they would have been tried to death. But Hitler realizes that if you're executing your star military officer, you're going to out.

• 45:34Speaker 04

  You can't kill David Beckham.

• 45:35Speaker 03

  You cannot kill David Beckham.

• 45:36Speaker 04

  David Beckham look like he killed himself.

• 45:38Speaker 03

  It's Epstein stuff, right?

• 45:40Speaker 04

  Well, because Epstein was a national hero and everyone was like, if you killed Epstein.

• 45:44Speaker 03

  Then I'm out, I'm out.

• 45:45Speaker 04

  It's like, that is.

• 45:46Speaker 03

  You can't, come on.

• 45:47Speaker 04

  He's the people's champion.

• 45:48Speaker 03

  If Obama kills Epstein, I mean, anyway, so, um, Rommel gets off, offered the option to quietly commit suicide.

• 45:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's very ancient Rome.

• 45:58Speaker 03

  It is very ancient, very, it's Nero-esque.

• 46:01Speaker 04

  Yeah. And also his name, Rommel, when he was fighting with Italians, they mythologized him as being Romulus, right?

• 46:06Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 46:07Speaker 03

  Yes, they call him Romulito.

• 46:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:08Speaker 03

  Like he's a footballer. Yes, John?

• 46:09Speaker 07

  How do you think they offer that?

• 46:11Speaker 03

  I don't think it's really an offer. I think it's a.

• 46:13Speaker 04

  Is he got two choices?

• 46:14Speaker 07

  Is it using metaphors or is it like?

• 46:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, is it innuendo?

• 46:17Speaker 07

  Is there any level of nuance?

• 46:18Speaker 04

  Because there's that great, who was the guy, who's the, the gay guy in the spa and the night of the long knives?

• 46:23Speaker 03

  Oh, Ernst Rum.

• 46:24Speaker 04

  That was Rum, where they're like, you know what to do. They have a gun and they leave for 15 minutes, they go back in.

• 46:29Speaker 03

  He shoves it up his arse like, ah, Rom.

• 46:31Speaker 04

  I'm not going to kill myself. You just left without asking. No.

• 46:33Speaker 05

  Also, you're giving me a means of defending myself.

• 46:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, what the fuck?

• 46:36Speaker 03

  So then they come in and submachine gun him.

• 46:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, you meant to fucking kill yourself. It was meant to be cool. It was meant to be like a cool ending.

• 46:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:42Speaker 04

  You can still be alive.

• 46:43Speaker 05

  What a way to find out you're not as convincing as you thought you were.

• 46:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:46Speaker 04

  You know what to do.

• 46:48Speaker 03

  And he's there going, what do I do?

• 46:52Speaker 04

  You know what to do.

• 46:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:54Speaker 04

  Not that, fucking hell, Ernst.

• 46:56Speaker 03

  Christ.

• 46:59Speaker 03

  He's just there, strung up like a hog.

• 47:02Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 47:03Speaker 03

  The gun's still on the table.

• 47:04Speaker 04

  I don't understand the context. Oh, the gun.

• 47:07Speaker 03

  Oh, the gun. Oh, right. He'd not seen Chekhov.

• 47:10Speaker 04

  No.

• 47:12Speaker 03

  Chekhov's rope. Anyway, Chekhov's flashlight. So Rommel gets told, gets told.

• 47:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:21Speaker 03

  To kill yourself.

• 47:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:22Speaker 04

  What'd you kill yourself for, yeah?

• 47:23Speaker 03

  Which allows him to maintain, to sort of maintain a military, he gets buried with military honours, and his family won't be persecuted as snakes.

• 47:34Speaker 05

  They say it was a heart attack or something, I think.

• 47:35Speaker 03

  So, yeah, he takes cyanide pill.

• 47:38Speaker 04

  They said he died like Stuma. He rolled off a.

• 47:41Speaker 03

  Off a jeep.

• 47:42Speaker 05

  Well, it's like a big sausage. Came his home peacefully, surrounded by his family.

• 47:47Speaker 05

  It was a big haggis with a grenade in it. It was very peaceful.

• 47:50Speaker 03

  A peaceful German death.

• 47:51Speaker 05

  A peaceful German death.

• 47:52Speaker 03

  His sausage casing burst at home.

• 47:53Speaker 04

  Exploded from eating sausages.

• 47:55Speaker 05

  His heart exploded from sausages, surrounded by his family.

• 48:00Speaker 03

  It's what he would have wanted.

• 48:03Speaker 03

  So he kills, he takes cyanide, but he's wearing his Africa Corps jacket and holding his Field Marshal's baton. Which the thing is, I remember from when we did Goring, is that the higher up the army you get, the gayer the aesthetic is. I'm holding my baton while I kill myself. It's quite.

• 48:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, little sticks and things.

• 48:17Speaker 03

  Anyway, then the official narrative is that Rommel dies from a heart attack caused by complications from the injuries he'd sustained in Normandy.

• 48:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:26Speaker 03

  Hitler then gives him a state funeral, it's a national day of mourning, and it only comes to light after the Allies speak to his widow in, after the war. So it's covered up, really.

• 48:36Speaker 04

  I mean, that's one of my favourite things about being a despot would be to kill my enemies and then celebrate their death as if they'd been a hero.

• 48:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:42Speaker 04

  Very much à la Putin when he killed Prigozhin, you know, the head of the Václav.

• 48:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 48:49Speaker 04

  And then he sent flowers to his funeral, saying, I'm so sorry for your loss.

• 48:54Speaker 05

  Very Game of Thrones.

• 48:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, awesome.

• 48:56Speaker 05

  Sitting at the funeral.

• 48:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, smiling. He was a great man.

• 49:00Speaker 03

  So Monty, after, after the Allies win, Monty becomes a national hero because, I guess, is there another British general who?

• 49:10Speaker 04

  Stephen stands out at all?

• 49:12Speaker 03

  Stands out like.

• 49:13Speaker 05

  Not with this level of press, no. You've got like Slim with, in the east with.

• 49:20Speaker 05

  Myanmar and stuff, but it's not really making the headlines.

• 49:23Speaker 03

  I know so little about that, all that stuff.

• 49:24Speaker 05

  The chindits. It's cool stuff, but it's not making headlines.

• 49:27Speaker 03

  No, but.

• 49:28Speaker 04

  Who are the big British?

• 49:29Speaker 03

  I think it's because this is, well, this is why, this is why this series is so absorbing is that it's, it's character driven military history and Monty becomes synonymous with defeating another character.

• 49:42Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 49:43Speaker 03

  Who himself was quite, his personality.

• 49:45Speaker 04

  The man behind the supply lines and Jerry Kanson.

• 49:47Speaker 03

  Exactly, yeah. But who's the man behind the supply lines?

• 49:50Speaker 05

  It's easier to picture in your head.

• 49:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, yes, exactly.

• 49:52Speaker 05

  You want to imagine a different guy.

• 49:53Speaker 04

  So you don't need the characters because you can see through it.

• 49:56Speaker 03

  Because you can read those maps.

• 49:57Speaker 04

  Exactly. So you don't need it. But it's a way, it's a balance, it's a bridge.

• 50:00Speaker 05

  It's nice to imagine a guy with some visual branding going, hurrrrrrr on the other end of the telephone.

• 50:05Speaker 03

  The guy with big shorts and a flyswatter.

• 50:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:07Speaker 03

  He won the war.

• 50:08Speaker 05

  He's annoying the guy with the weird little baseball hat with goggles on it.

• 50:12Speaker 04

  The steampunk.

• 50:13Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 50:13Speaker 05

  Steampunk Rommel.

• 50:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, the big shorts beats the steampunk. I understand, I understand the war. Rock, paper, scissors, big shorts beat steampunk. Done.

• 50:22Speaker 05

  Rommel's clockwork top hat has been knocked off.

• 50:25Speaker 03

  Good. I fucking hate steampunk.

• 50:29Speaker 04

  But you love Nazis, so it's.

• 50:30Speaker 03

  I'm interested in Nazis. I find them fascinating.

• 50:36Speaker 03

  Anyway.

• 50:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:37Speaker 03

  But he's also, he's the, he's the artist who defeats the desert fox.

• 50:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:41Speaker 03

  And so, and as you say, Rommel's the most, you know, famous, I guess after like Hitler, Goering, Goebbels. He's probably the most famous Nazi.

• 50:50Speaker 04

  He's kind of the one.

• 50:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:51Speaker 04

  But also, what does, what's Rommel actually achieved? So I guess he was, he did great.

• 50:57Speaker 03

  Well, 1940.

• 50:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 51:00Speaker 04

  But then everything else has been a loss. I guess he did the best he could, but I don't know what, is he, he wrote a book on military tactics, but those military tactics were.

• 51:11Speaker 03

  They were used in as the Germans, you know, the German high point, you'd say is basically up to Monty's arrival, right? It's when Barbarossa kicks off and at the same time, Rommel has pushed the Brits all the way up to basically Alexandria. That's the high point of the whole war for Germany. And that's all been based off Rommel's, he's the personification of the tactics they've used to do that. And they think Barbarossa will be over in two months.

• 51:37Speaker 04

  And Rommel's not evolved in Barbarossa?

• 51:39Speaker 03

  No, because he's in North Africa.

• 51:41Speaker 05

  And the tactics that Rommel was using, or pre-figure the tactics that we're still trying to use now, where the German training was like, you had to be able to do the job of the guy one rank above you and one rank below you. So like, there was never a moment where anyone knew, where everyone, there was never a moment where no one knew how to load a thing or do a thing. And it was all based on decisions on the ground, use your initiative, which they were doing that first.

• 52:04Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 52:05Speaker 05

  It's a lack of resources, really. If you'd given that guy enough fuel, I mean, God knows. So it's best of a bad hand, right? Like.

• 52:14Speaker 04

  And where would you say, collectively, where would you say they're both, if you were going to rank World War Two commanders, top five?

• 52:21Speaker 03

  If if.

• 52:24Speaker 04

  Because we've got, who's the guy, who won Stalingrad? Who was the Russian guy?

• 52:28Speaker 03

  Don't Charlie, put the mic away.

• 52:29Speaker 04

  Zhukov?

• 52:29Speaker 05

  I think Zhukov. I think so. Well, Zhukov was the cavalryman.

• 52:34Speaker 03

  Shut up. Shut up Charlie.

• 52:36Speaker 05

  There were a bunch of generals there.

• 52:39Speaker 04

  I'm going to leave this gun here.

• 52:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:46Speaker 05

  Marshal Zhukov, I think is the main kind of guy.

• 52:48Speaker 04

  He's the main Russian.

• 52:49Speaker 05

  But the Russian army is so big that there's so many marshals and generals.

• 52:52Speaker 04

  It doesn't feel like it's like.

• 52:53Speaker 03

  So how much strategy is it? You're throwing men at bullets. That's kind of the strategy. Just throw men.

• 53:00Speaker 04

  So there's Patton, there's Eisenhower, there's Monty.

• 53:03Speaker 05

  Well, Eisenhower's like supreme command. So he's really like looking down from space.

• 53:08Speaker 04

  He's more doing political.

• 53:09Speaker 03

  Pen pusher, really, Eisenhower.

• 53:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, fuck Eisenhower.

• 53:12Speaker 03

  Fuck Ike, man.

• 53:13Speaker 04

  Fucking pen pusher loser Eisenhower. Fuck Ike.

• 53:16Speaker 05

  Nerd.

• 53:17Speaker 03

  Wear your shorts, you fucking pen pusher.

• 53:19Speaker 04

  Chat GPT, rank them.

• 53:20Speaker 03

  No, come on. We need to get to post-war Monty.

• 53:23Speaker 07

  George Marshall was quite significant.

• 53:24Speaker 03

  We need to get to. Post-war Monty, right. So Monty becomes, he gets moved up, he's very high up in the army, becomes, what is it, commander of the British Army of the Rhine, so I guess the occupying force after the war. And then what's the chief of the, let's just get the, chief of the Imperial General Staff is basically as high as it gets in post-war Britain.

• 53:45Speaker 04

  Is it as high as it gets? Because it says one of the most senior, and I'm always like, when it's the best one, who's higher, who's the fucking-

• 53:50Speaker 03

  It looks like Channel 4. You think you've cracked it and there's some twat above them who goes, "Now..."

• 53:54Speaker 04

  If it's not Monty, why is Monty not the main-

• 53:56Speaker 03

  "We need more maths. I don't care if they're guilty of rape, people watch it." Not my words. Anyway, so Monty becomes this sort of celebrity, but as we highlighted in the last episode, he lives too long. Because when there's not a war on, he opens his mouth.

• 54:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:17Speaker 03

  And listen-

• 54:18Speaker 04

  These men are not built for peacetime.

• 54:20Speaker 03

  This man, as we said, was built in, he was born in the late 1880s, the height of the Victorian era. Britain was at its pomp. Is he a man who's going to fit in with the 60s in the miniskirt? He's not.

• 54:33Speaker 04

  My heart breaks the fact they had to live through the 70s to see it all.

• 54:36Speaker 03

  It's devastating. It's devastating.

• 54:38Speaker 04

  He should have died thinking that it was all going to be okay.

• 54:40Speaker 03

  In the 50s, he would have died.

• 54:40Speaker 05

  He's the opposite of Austin Powers.

• 54:43Speaker 03

  He is the, yes, he's one of Austin Powers' Horcrux, is bird of Montgomery. Now, in his 2001 biography, The For Monty, a man named Nigel Hamilton argued that Montgomery was a repressed homosexual.

• 54:56Speaker 04

  It's the kind of people Tucker Carlson interviews, gives them three hours interviews.

• 55:00Speaker 03

  His evidence for this is that Monty would write a series of love letters to young boys in the 50s, one of which was Nigel Hamilton, his later biographer, who was so, whether platonic or sexual, they were such friends that Monty gave him all his papers. So that's why he's an official biographer. He was groomed to be his official biographer.

• 55:21Speaker 05

  Are these love letters, as in love letters, or is this that thing that some people do to sell books where it's like-

• 55:28Speaker 05

  Just to kind of, the smallest amount of affection from a repressed Victorian.

• 55:32Speaker 04

  I'm like a love letter from Monty.

• 55:33Speaker 03

  Sorry, I've got a book out. Are you saying that I could, what do I do? Do I have to?

• 55:36Speaker 05

  You need to accuse a famous historical figure of homosexuality, but it's just.

• 55:41Speaker 03

  160 episodes of that, fucking right. It's a whole Patreon archive that's calling everyone a paedophile. What else do you want?

• 55:48Speaker 05

  Then it's done. The book's gonna nail it.

• 55:49Speaker 03

  The book will sell, fine.

• 55:50Speaker 05

  Oh, big time.

• 55:51Speaker 03

  If anything, I guess accusing people of not being paedophiles, that's more.

• 55:54Speaker 05

  That's more controversial.

• 55:54Speaker 03

  More controversial.

• 55:57Speaker 03

  So, now, in 1967, Monty's in the House of Lords and he opposes the decriminalization of homosexuality.

• 56:07Speaker 05

  A psychological projection.

• 56:08Speaker 03

  So they think that that stance he took is pure psychological projection.

• 56:11Speaker 05

  Right.

• 56:12Speaker 03

  And the evidence for this is that he, after his wife died of an insect bite, he basically just like never, never really hung out with women again.

• 56:21Speaker 05

  Right.

• 56:22Speaker 03

  But he dismisses the idea of decriminalized homosexuality by saying that this, this sort of thing may be tolerated by the French, but we're British, thank God.

• 56:35Speaker 03

  Cook, King.

• 56:40Speaker 03

  I love this guy.

• 56:41Speaker 05

  I, I don't know, I think, I think there was no need to do any projection if you were a repressed homosexual in British politics in the mid 20th century. You just were a Tory lord.

• 56:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:52Speaker 05

  There's more than enough to be getting on with.

• 56:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:54Speaker 05

  God.

• 56:55Speaker 04

  You go, there's a lot of cocks to suck in the toilets in the House of Lords.

• 56:57Speaker 05

  You go, inevitably, you're banging like one of the Cray Twins or something mad, like there's a big scandal and MI5 covers it up. There's no need to be going around legislating anything.

• 57:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, but exactly.

• 57:07Speaker 05

  I think this is too sincere.

• 57:08Speaker 04

  It works fine, yeah.

• 57:09Speaker 05

  He's sticking his little head up above the parapet because he actually means this shit.

• 57:13Speaker 04

  But it's just like, why ruin the fun?

• 57:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 57:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, I prefer it being an elite activity.

• 57:17Speaker 03

  It is more fun when it's legal.

• 57:21Speaker 03

  So, Hamilton, who is sort of groomed to do his biography, claims that banning homosexuality was a crutch they would use to sort of, you know, bury his own urges.

• 57:31Speaker 04

  Because, of course, they were, it was illegal, yeah.

• 57:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. Now we get to, Pierre, I'll let you go off on this.

• 57:36Speaker 05

  Oh, good.

• 57:37Speaker 03

  Monty's public endorsement of apartheid.

• 57:39Speaker 04

  Oh, interesting.

• 57:42Speaker 04

  Hundred points for pronouncing it correctly.

• 57:43Speaker 03

  Thank you. Well, it's a party, isn't it? That's we.

• 57:48Speaker 04

  A party.

• 57:48Speaker 03

  A party.

• 57:49Speaker 04

  It's a party for us.

• 57:50Speaker 03

  A party for us, not for you, not if you're not invited. That's the whole, that's why it's called that.

• 57:54Speaker 04

  In theory, you'll have your own separate but just as good party.

• 57:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:58Speaker 04

  But you won't really.

• 57:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:59Speaker 04

  But we're gonna say that at the start.

• 58:02Speaker 03

  Now, his infatuation with the South African regime has two major visits. In 62, he visits South Africa and dines with the prime minister, who basically was the architect, which I know which one.

• 58:14Speaker 04

  62 would be Fervuut, I think.

• 58:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:16Speaker 04

  Were you a fan of architecture?

• 58:18Speaker 03

  This kind of architecture. Big fan of apartheid architecture. Apartheid architecture is a beautiful thing. He calls it a, quote, "excellent thing." He goes on a sort of pro-apartheid press tour.

• 58:29Speaker 04

  Oh, man.

• 58:30Speaker 03

  Arguing that God never intended the races to mix because if you, quote, "shake a black man's hand, a negative electrical force resists the contact which you could physically feel."

• 58:40Speaker 04

  I did not know he said this.

• 58:42Speaker 03

  Deep, deep cuts, you know?

• 58:44Speaker 04

  That is a deep. Wow, I did not know this at all. He thought an electrical, but that's true of all atoms, for one thing.

• 58:50Speaker 03

  I didn't, I didn't think about this before we fucking did a series wearing berets.

• 58:55Speaker 04

  Crazy.

• 58:55Speaker 03

  Isn't that crazy?

• 58:56Speaker 04

  That is mad. Because that's also like, we've covered a lot of great racists in their time.

• 59:01Speaker 03

  Scholars and.

• 59:02Speaker 04

  Scholars, racists, to like, taking races to new heights we never imagined. This is groundbreaking.

• 59:07Speaker 05

  Bringing, bringing atomic level electrical charges into this.

• 59:10Speaker 04

  It's like a particle, particle racism.

• 59:12Speaker 03

  You can't physically shake their hand.

• 59:14Speaker 04

  That's new.

• 59:15Speaker 03

  That is new, yeah. But this is 60s, space age racism.

• 59:19Speaker 04

  Psychedelic.

• 59:20Speaker 03

  It is. It's gone off, it's trippy. It's been disconnected from its scientific racial roots.

• 59:24Speaker 04

  It's one day we'll put a racist on the moon. It's.

• 59:28Speaker 03

  Oh, imagine Monty's that guy. Yeah, it is. Now, he gets, now, in 1999, the government declassifies Cabinet papers from 48 under the 50-year rule, and they reveal that fucking Monty had done a two-month tour of 11 African nations. And then he wrote to the prime minister, which would be Attlee, saying that the, the African is, quote.

• 59:51Speaker 04

  Quote. Yeah, sorry. You were about to go straight into that.

• 59:55Speaker 03

  No, I wasn't. The African is a quote, my king, the African is quote, "A complete savage and incapable of developing the country himself." And he urges the government to ignore the UN and exploit Africa as a white supremacist bulwark against communism.

• 1:00:13Speaker 05

  This was a big thing in apartheid.

• 1:00:15Speaker 03

  Was it?

• 1:00:16Speaker 05

  They would talk about the Red Danger, the Rui Hafar. And the big thing was like, "We're not racist, it's just that all the communists are black." You know, that was a kind of their angle for a long time.

• 1:00:26Speaker 03

  Steve Biko, left-leaning, but then left-leaning against Africa means can you stop apartheid? It's not communism.

• 1:00:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, they would just say like, "Oh, well, this is our foundation of good Christian civilization against..."

• 1:00:38Speaker 03

  It's quite funny to call apartheid a bunch of commun... people who are anti-apartheid, you're a fucking communist.

• 1:00:43Speaker 05

  That was the line. They went for it.

• 1:00:45Speaker 03

  But this is where the revisionism about actually the North African campaign being won by Turing starts.

• 1:00:51Speaker 05

  As a counter to...

• 1:00:52Speaker 03

  As a counter to the fact that he was actively pro-apartheid, pro-white supremacist.

• 1:00:57Speaker 05

  I guess this is the problem with the House of Lords, is it's your fucking uncle at Christmas.

• 1:01:02Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:01:03Speaker 05

  And it's when you all sat down afterwards, and he's like, he does have a seat, he's a member of the family.

• 1:01:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:07Speaker 05

  It's a huge...

• 1:01:08Speaker 03

  Why has he got a microphone?

• 1:01:09Speaker 05

  It's the Chamber of Uncles.

• 1:01:12Speaker 03

  It is the Chamber of Uncles.

• 1:01:13Speaker 05

  All legislation has to pass through the Chamber of Uncles to be amended and approved.

• 1:01:17Speaker 03

  Why? Why are we getting our uncle pissed and them signing off on fucking legislation?

• 1:01:19Speaker 05

  They're all pissed, they're all getting pissed. There's a bar open from 7am all day.

• 1:01:23Speaker 03

  It's awful. Crazy.

• 1:01:25Speaker 05

  They're overheated in the big slopes.

• 1:01:26Speaker 03

  He becomes such a renowned sort of British establishment figure that supposedly Monty Python is named after Monty.

• 1:01:34Speaker 05

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:01:35Speaker 03

  Sort of mocking tribute to him. And also, there is a thing called a Montgomery Cocktail, which is a martini mixed at 15 to 1 gin to vermouth, because supposedly he would refuse to attack unless he had a 15 to 1 advantage. That's a lot of gin. Or it's basically just drinking gin, isn't it?

• 1:01:51Speaker 05

  Gin with a dash of vermouth.

• 1:01:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, a splat of a pet of vermouth.

• 1:01:54Speaker 05

  Given the stuff I've just found out he was saying in the 60s, you don't want to say... I'll have a Montgomery cocktail. Is this something to do with the atomic racism again?

• 1:02:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:04Speaker 05

  No, no, it's just a big pint of gin, please. Good, that's nice.

• 1:02:08Speaker 03

  So he dies in 76, I believe.

• 1:02:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:12Speaker 03

  Although he was in public, he was sort of a public figure until he basically got too old and sort of hid. He died with his brother holding his hand. And he received a military funeral with his coffin draped in a Union Jack and a beret placed on top of the coffin. Yes, Charlie?

• 1:02:30Speaker 07

  You know, you said that he died too late. What age would you ideally like to go?

• 1:02:34Speaker 03

  No, no, it's not about his age. It's about his views coming out.

• 1:02:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:39Speaker 03

  At a time when they were, you know, deeply out of step with public opinion.

• 1:02:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:43Speaker 03

  To say the least.

• 1:02:45Speaker 04

  The 70s shouldn't have seen Monty, Monty shouldn't have seen the 70s.

• 1:02:48Speaker 07

  Do you think that could happen to you? Do you think like?

• 1:02:49Speaker 03

  Hundred percent. If anything, I'm already there.

• 1:02:52Speaker 04

  He's the Pharaoh of Monty.

• 1:02:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:55Speaker 07

  What decade do you think you'd ideally live to?

• 1:02:58Speaker 03

  We, we, I don't know, I mean, they might come around again.

• 1:03:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:04Speaker 03

  The 30s might come around again, who knows? Who knows? And so I suppose it's, you know, Monty is the great, outlasts Rommel. It's, you know, Rommel's here for a good time, not a long time.

• 1:03:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:16Speaker 03

  And Monty just sort of, I guess it's a victory of autism over ADHD.

• 1:03:21Speaker 05

  We do need to keep asking at the end of these series what Charlie's learnt from this.

• 1:03:24Speaker 03

  That's true. Charlie, what have you learned at the end of four hours of?

• 1:03:27Speaker 05

  Autism over ADHD.

• 1:03:30Speaker 04

  Because of the Reformation, you didn't know what the Reformation was.

• 1:03:32Speaker 03

  That was very dispiriting, actually, after the end, we asked you.

• 1:03:35Speaker 05

  Though sadly, a lot of people have come up to me and said, I did agree with Charlie at the end and did also didn't know what the Reformation was.

• 1:03:40Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:03:41Speaker 05

  So.

• 1:03:42Speaker 07

  I've learnt that there's loads of, I think that fish can sink.

• 1:03:47Speaker 05

  No, no, no.

• 1:03:47Speaker 07

  Fish can drown on the floor of the sea.

• 1:03:49Speaker 03

  I don't think they drown, though, they just sink. They just sink.

• 1:03:52Speaker 07

  Fish die, there's loads of dead fish on the floor in France.

• 1:03:55Speaker 05

  Anything about Monty and Rommel?

• 1:03:56Speaker 07

  Monty. Monty, wait, hang on, I've got something. Monty and Rommel.

• 1:04:05Speaker 07

  They never met and maybe if they had, it would have actually been all right and they could have hashed it out. Because I don't actually think they actually, they would have never conversed in person.

• 1:04:13Speaker 03

  Hmm. Yeah, that's true. They did never meet.

• 1:04:15Speaker 04

  But then them hashing it out is kind of a worst case scenario because if it's like they, Monty and Rommel meet.

• 1:04:22Speaker 03

  I think, I think they did hash it out. I think that's what the Battle of El Alamein was, was them hashing it out.

• 1:04:27Speaker 05

  Let's, I'll meet you at El Alamein, we'll hash this out.

• 1:04:29Speaker 03

  Famously. They hashed it out. That's kind of what the series is about.

• 1:04:35Speaker 03

  Pierre, your concluding thoughts on the, how important to the war is it? These, you know, we've, we've sort of done a deep dive on, you know, we wanted to do North Africa, but also this is the funnest way to do it because it's the importance of the scope.

• 1:04:48Speaker 03

  How, you know, when you're weighing up the whole, the whole World War Two, how important do you send them on to?

• 1:04:56Speaker 05

  Oh yeah, big deal. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You just need someone autistic enough to ignore angry texts from Churchill to hurry up. You just wait till you have an overwhelming advantage in supplies and armour and then just smush the enemy.

• 1:05:09Speaker 03

  Smush. Rommel got smushed.

• 1:05:11Speaker 05

  Rommel got smushed like a big bug.

• 1:05:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:14Speaker 05

  And then, yeah, unfortunately then Monty got over excited and Operation Market Garden and all that.

• 1:05:20Speaker 03

  Was that him?

• 1:05:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was his plan. It's his big fuck up.

• 1:05:23Speaker 03

  Oh fuck, we didn't even talk about that.

• 1:05:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, we also didn't talk.

• 1:05:25Speaker 05

  Land up there, Berlin, 10 minute drive, you know.

• 1:05:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was his big fuck up. But also, we didn't talk about the PR disaster. Because we didn't have disasters during the war because he's such a British supremacist. He still viewed Britain as far more superior than America. And when the Battle of the Bulge happened.

• 1:05:43Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:05:43Speaker 04

  Which was mainly an American thing. It was a very small thing that Monty did. He basically did a press conference where he said it was all the Brits and it pissed off everyone to the point where Churchill had to apologise.

• 1:05:53Speaker 05

  He would annoy the Americans like constantly.

• 1:05:56Speaker 03

  But this is, this is the autism coming through, right? This is the bluntness. This is why press conferences are not his forte.

• 1:06:02Speaker 05

  You mustn't let someone like this talk to the public.

• 1:06:04Speaker 04

  No, of course not.

• 1:06:05Speaker 03

  No, the politic, internal politics.

• 1:06:07Speaker 04

  This is Errol Musk sort of stuff.

• 1:06:08Speaker 03

  This is Errol Musk. We're gonna, we're gonna have to bring up.

• 1:06:11Speaker 04

  Press conference with Errol Musk.

• 1:06:12Speaker 03

  We're gonna have to bring up Errol Musk on the Patreon where Pierre's gonna stick around and we're gonna do, we're gonna carry on our history of the SAS. But we will also get his opinion on the grandfather of the pod, Errol Musk, as a fellow South African. Pierre, we need to plug your, your podcasts, your two podcasts.

• 1:06:27Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:06:28Speaker 03

  Video games and then you do Bud Pod with Glenn.

• 1:06:30Speaker 04

  I do Bud Pod with Glenn.

• 1:06:31Speaker 05

  Which is a sort of just general comedy chat.

• 1:06:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:34Speaker 05

  Kind of pathetically. We did a big, we won an award for a big riff about how Mr Blobby was in the IRA.

• 1:06:39Speaker 03

  Brilliant.

• 1:06:39Speaker 05

  And that's why he has that.

• 1:06:40Speaker 04

  An award winning riff?

• 1:06:41Speaker 05

  An award winning riff.

• 1:06:42Speaker 03

  You can get awards for riffs?

• 1:06:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:06:44Speaker 03

  Christ.

• 1:06:45Speaker 05

  Modern day. Awards for bloody everything. Um, yes, the idea was that Mr Blobby's voice was dubbed like Jerry Adams. And that he wasn't actually saying Blobby Blobby Blobby. He was making quite salient points about the plantations. And he'd been overdubbed by the BBC.

• 1:06:58Speaker 03

  You're also, people need to check out your stand up. You're doing Edinburgh.

• 1:07:01Speaker 05

  Doing Edinburgh Fringe?

• 1:07:02Speaker 03

  Again.

• 1:07:02Speaker 04

  What's this? In a row? How many hours is this?

• 1:07:04Speaker 05

  Eleven or twelve.

• 1:07:05Speaker 04

  Eleven, twelve hours. Can't even keep counting the amount of hours in a row.

• 1:07:09Speaker 03

  I mean, it's kind of like unfair to everyone else doing Edinburgh. It's a bit like Michael Phelps joining the Paralympics. It is not fair that you're doing Edinburgh again this far in. It will be the best thing you see at the festival if you go to see Pierre.

• 1:07:21Speaker 05

  I'm going to keep doing it until they make me stop.

• 1:07:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:24Speaker 05

  Promote me to the league above.

• 1:07:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:26Speaker 05

  Whatever that is.

• 1:07:27Speaker 03

  One of the best stand ups there is. Uh, so go and check out Pierre's stuff and your, your Radio Four, the reels of your Radio Four series are really good as well.

• 1:07:36Speaker 05

  Thank you, man. Those, yeah, that series is still just up forever, I think.

• 1:07:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:40Speaker 05

  Just through your iPlayer, BBC Sounds, whatever it is.

• 1:07:43Speaker 03

  Check Pierre out. Uh, he's going to stick around and we're going to get into the SAS again.

• 1:07:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:07:46Speaker 03

  Um, and if not, we'll see you next week for a brand new topic from all of us here. Good night. God bless.

• 1:07:51Speaker 05

  Good night.

• 1:08:10Speaker 00

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• 1:08:39Speaker 06

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