Pod Insights No Such Thing As A Fish No Such Thing As Captain Crossword About this episode Tom Allen joins Dan, James and Andy to discuss Noel, Nudie, Greeks and Gardening.
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Transcript 11,020 words · 10 speakers
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0:59 Speaker 02 Hi, everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of No Such Things as a Fish, where we were joined by the legend, the national treasure already, I think, but definitely future national treasure, Tom Allen.
1:10 Speaker 03 That's right. Tom is absolutely fantastic, as you're about to hear. He's a flanner, he's a man about town, among many other things. You might not think it because he's so dapper, but he's also a gardener.
1:19 Speaker 02 You might not think it because he speaks so nicely, but he's also a podcaster. And he has a new podcast out, it's called Pottering with Tom Allen. And he gets a celebrity to his garden, be it Nish Kumar, be it James Acaster, be it Natalie Cassidy, and they talk about gardening.
1:36 Speaker 03 It's lovely, and I think they do some gardening as well, actually.
1:39 Speaker 02 He probably has some Natalie Cassidy begonias, some Nish Kumar asperdistras.
1:47 Speaker 03 Lovely. Can James name a third plant?
1:49 Speaker 02 Absolutely not. But if you want to hear Tom's podcast, then go to wherever you get your podcasts, it's called Pottering with Tom Allen, and it's absolutely fantastic. But Andy, we have some more news.
1:58 Speaker 03 That's right. The other thing to say is that in a week's time, we're going to be doing the first ever Club Fish quiz. Now, this is for people who've joined Club Fish at the top tier, the friend of the podcast tier.
2:10 Speaker 04 We are going to be doing a quiz globally, I imagine. We suspect hundreds of thousands may be attending and you could be one of them. It's going to be on Zoom or equivalent streaming platform. We've all been writing our questions. We've been showing them to each other. We've been coming up with silly games. It's going to be so much fun. So mark your diaries or your calendars for Friday, the 23rd of January, 7pm British time. But if you're around the world, we'd love to see you there as well.
2:37 Speaker 02 It's going to be so much fun. We can't wait to do it. But anyway, please enjoy this week's episode of No Such Thing as a Fish with the incredible Tom Allen. On with the podcast.
2:45 Speaker 04 On with the show.
3:01 Speaker 04 Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Holborn. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray and Tom Allen. And once again, we have gathered round the microphones with our four favourite facts from the last seven days. And in a particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is Tom.
3:25 Speaker 05 In September 1945, a small booklet was discovered in the main offices of the Third Reich in Berlin, or Reich if you're from southern Germany. In Berlin, it was a secret list of 2,820 British individuals who'd be rounded up in the event of a successful invasion. And Noel Coward found his name on page 34.
3:45 Speaker 02 Oh, okay. Okay. Why were they going after him?
3:49 Speaker 05 Well, firstly, I think anybody in entertainment would be annoyed that they had to go so far to find their own name.
3:56 Speaker 03 There's only one thing worse than being on the Nazis' death list in the event of their invasion. And that's not being on the...
4:03 Speaker 04 I can't believe you're quoting Oscar Wilde in a Noel Coward section.
4:07 Speaker 05 Oh, yes.
4:08 Speaker 04 We'll get on to that.
4:09 Speaker 05 Well, they just kind of crossed over in a sort of...
4:13 Speaker 03 Dalai Lama?
4:14 Speaker 05 In a kind of Dalai Lama way. Yeah.
4:16 Speaker 03 Is that what we're saying?
4:18 Speaker 05 Very Dalai Lama way.
4:19 Speaker 02 Have you ever looked at who died just before you were born? No, I never have.
4:24 Speaker 05 That's a fun idea.
4:25 Speaker 02 There was one of the popes, the one that was before John Paul the Second.
4:29 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah, in the early days.
4:29 Speaker 02 So I think it was, yeah, just before I was born, he died, so.
4:32 Speaker 05 Oh.
4:33 Speaker 02 I'm not saying anything else, but I am Catholic, so.
4:36 Speaker 04 I think you could still do it as well.
4:38 Speaker 02 I can. Well, no, I've been excommunicated, as we've said, but.
4:42 Speaker 04 But what a comeback story that would be for you.
4:43 Speaker 05 Yeah.
4:44 Speaker 02 I'm actually the Pope. I can change the rules if I'm the Pope.
4:47 Speaker 04 Yes.
4:47 Speaker 05 Yeah, exactly.
4:48 Speaker 02 Yeah.
4:49 Speaker 04 Um, let's get back to Noel Coward.
4:51 Speaker 05 No, no, I like that. I like that. I was suddenly panicking about who died in 1983.
4:55 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah, lots.
4:58 Speaker 05 Mountbatten? No, that was late 70s.
5:00 Speaker 04 Yes, Mountbatten was.
5:01 Speaker 05 I went straight through aristocracy.
5:06 Speaker 04 We should quickly say who Noel Coward is. Noel Coward, very famous playwright.
5:09 Speaker 05 I didn't bother to say that. I just assumed all your, all your listeners would know who he was.
5:13 Speaker 04 Yeah, but you know better than anyone because you're part of the Noel Coward Society, so.
5:16 Speaker 05 Well, I have been involved, but I, um, the, um, the Noel Coward, yeah, usually seen as a playwright and a writer of songs, particularly Mad Dogs and Englishmen. He was also an actor, a musician, and, um, and an author as well. He wrote a novel. Well, he was wanted by the sinister Amstgruber V1, V1G1. I don't know what, I don't know what that would be.
5:40 Speaker 04 Sounds like a music channel in Germany.
5:42 Speaker 05 Amstgruber V1G1. A department, it was a department that evaluated intelligence material. Well, he was a, it turned out, a British spy. And his cover had apparently been blown. And if the war had gone differently, well, the man known the world over for the song Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans could have ended his days in front of a firing squad.
6:01 Speaker 02 Wow.
6:02 Speaker 05 So, yeah, and when the list was discovered amongst other people who the Nazis didn't like for various reasons, and the author Rebecca West sent him a telegram to say, "My dear, the people who were to be seen dead with", which I thought was very good.
6:17 Speaker 02 Oh, wow.
6:19 Speaker 04 This song, interestingly, got him in a bit of trouble back home, didn't it?
6:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
6:24 Speaker 04 What was it called again? It was called?
6:25 Speaker 05 Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans.
6:26 Speaker 04 Yeah, so, um, came out during World War II. It was a satire. It was.
6:31 Speaker 02 It was banned by the BBC.
6:32 Speaker 04 Exactly, because the satire.
6:33 Speaker 03 I didn't quite cross as well as he hoped it would. They thought that he was actually genuinely saying that. I was excited about it because I think it's the only thing that Noel Coward has in common with The Prodigy. And their song Smack My Bitch Up, which was also banned by the BBC.
6:49 Speaker 02 Can you imagine him reading Smack My Bitch Up, Noel Coward, in his accent?
6:54 Speaker 03 He'd have, I think he'd have gussied up the lyrics a bit. He'd have made them cleverer.
7:00 Speaker 02 Well, I always wondered how he got away with being a spy because he was so flamboyant, right? It seems like as a spy, you have to hide away a little bit.
7:08 Speaker 05 Well, Radio 4 did a dramatized version of what he was like. I think a lot of it as well was propaganda work in North America, obviously the US. I think to garner support for getting on board with the war effort, which I know wasn't the case at the beginning. So, so I think he was seen as a sort of, what would be a special envoy, I suppose, as much as anything. I don't think he was going behind enemy lines.
7:30 Speaker 03 No, but I, I didn't. He'd been recruited even before the war started. I think there was someone called Sir Robin Van Sittart, who was running.
7:38 Speaker 05 Sounds German, actually.
7:39 Speaker 03 Yes, but he was at the Foreign Office and he was, he was recruiting various people to go about their business in Europe, quite successful people. And then report back on the national mood, what people were saying, just kind of, sort of soft intelligence, as it were, not, you know. You need to observe this tank column and where it's going. This ball bearings factory. It was just like what you're hearing in social conversations. And I think Coward was sacked partly because he was too public in his maneuverings. And also because everyone looked at him, and this is after the war started, and they just thought, well, you're just going to a load of parties in Manhattan and you're really, you're really letting the side down. And actually, he was doing the war work, like he was doing.
8:17 Speaker 05 He was, he was really publicly shamed about it, I think. And I think the Daily Mail covered about it and, and said like, it's an outrage going over there, spending all this money, public money, going to parties.
8:28 Speaker 02 The Daily Mail who supported the Nazis just before the war?
8:31 Speaker 05 Well, it might, yeah, I mean, yeah. But I should check, I should check, was the Daily Mail that did it's app?
8:36 Speaker 03 Well, he used, he used to get in trouble with the Daily Express. Yeah. And actually, this is another war connection. So he wrote the screenplay.
8:43 Speaker 04 And starred in a movie called In Which We Serve, which was a really good movie. It often got used to get their morale up and show how the war was going. Um, and he kind of based the character on your past life, Mount Batten. Yeah. So, uh, he consulted with him and that was largely part of it. Can we say who Mount Batten was again? Sorry. Yeah, he was, um, he was. Earl, Earl Mountbatten, I think. Mountbatten, Lord Mountbatten, wasn't he? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And he was, he was Prince Philip's uncle, uh, by loose connection. Uh, I haven't researched it. But by being the brother of his mother or? Yeah. So it's kind of like loosely unky to him. Um. Is it like one of those uncles who's like just friends with your parents? I have a feeling it was. Yeah, exactly.
9:31 Speaker 03 And you were shocked at some point to find out that wasn't your uncle. I remember this when I was five. I found out Uncle Joe wasn't my uncle and I was a bit outraged.
9:38 Speaker 04 Oh, Uncle Joe.
9:39 Speaker 03 Yeah.
9:39 Speaker 04 Pour me a cup of coffee. Yeah. So anyway, Mountbatten was part of this thing with Noel Coward. And the Daily Express started ridiculing the production, saying that how could you have Noel Coward? Play a high ranking general in the army. He's a captain, I think. A captain, right. He wasn't. In the Navy. Yeah, yeah. He didn't, he didn't come across.
10:00 Speaker 03 Apart from that, don't carry on.
10:03 Speaker 03 I feel like I'm getting quite lost in my own fact here.
10:06 Speaker 04 Unfair of me to be tripping you. Well, I mean, I, I, I'm pretty sure he's a captain. I haven't watched it. I haven't seen the movie and you're, uh, you're part of the system and you're being absolutely pancaked between Tom's love of Noel Coward and my love of military rank.
10:18 Speaker 04 Sorry.
10:20 Speaker 04 Just bring a bit of golf into it and you're absolutely fucked. Yeah. He seems quite out of time to me, Noel Coward. I know his name and I know he's part of the place, but I do, you mentioned Oscar Wilde before. I do place him as part of that era, but he was in things like The Italian Job. You know, he was, he was, you know, in the sixties.
10:37 Speaker 03 Yeah, that was his, I think his last acting role.
10:39 Speaker 04 Right.
10:40 Speaker 03 He was born in 1899 and he served briefly in the First World War, which I didn't know. Cause again, I think of him as like, he's wearing his pajamas, maybe a dressing gown. He's smoking a pipe through a long holder. He's writing brilliant dialogue. He's writing. Plays like Blind Spirit and Hayfever, you know.
10:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:57 Speaker 03 Wit, but he served in this company called the, uh, the Artists Rifles.
11:03 Speaker 05 Which just sounds awful, doesn't it? I think it was, yeah, I think it was a place where maybe, I don't want to be unkind, maybe slightly less useful. Fighters were placed. And I think he wasn't ever put in any sort of position where he'd have to do anything too practical.
11:20 Speaker 03 Well, he got himself out of it quite fast. And this was only, I mean, he was born in 1899, so I think he was signed up aged 18 or maybe conscripted, I'm not sure. He, he was discharged for neuroasthenia, which was very much a catchall, you've got nerves.
11:34 Speaker 05 Sort of tying a piece of string around his finger.
11:36 Speaker 03 Why?
11:36 Speaker 05 That I guess is sort of.
11:37 Speaker 02 Stress.
11:39 Speaker 03 Stressful situation, definitely.
11:40 Speaker 05 There'd be, there'd be a TikTok about it now.
11:42 Speaker 02 But I think part of the reason he got so involved in World War Two as a spy or whatever is because he was a bit embarrassed by the fact that he'd like gone into World War One quite young and then had to leave quite quickly.
11:53 Speaker 03 Yeah, his company suffered lots of casualties in the last two months of the war. I mean, hundreds, you know, so I think, and that was after he, he'd been invalided out as it were, so yeah.
12:02 Speaker 04 Yeah, I love the main thing about him outside of his plays and his acting and his songs is the gossip. He was Mr. Anecdote, basically. He's like the Giles Brandreth of his day.
12:13 Speaker 02 I'm sure Giles will be.
12:14 Speaker 05 I would say Giles Brandreth will absolutely love that. My goodness, what a Christmas present for Giles.
12:21 Speaker 04 We'll, we'll clip this out and send it to him.
12:23 Speaker 05 Yes.
12:24 Speaker 04 And so there's, there's one great war anecdote from him, which is, he said, he never forgot the sight of Coco Chanel entering a Paris air raid shelter, followed by a maid who carried a gas mask on a velvet cushion. Wonderful stories.
12:38 Speaker 05 It was a time when people did, well, I know there was strata of class, but I think if you did transcend those strata, you would just end up being at parties with these people.
12:47 Speaker 02 Yeah.
12:48 Speaker 05 I don't know, maybe it would be the same now, but I mean.
12:50 Speaker 02 Because his, his mother, I think, had some vague sort of connection to the aristocracy. Maybe like an uncle or something. Yeah, she, um, like Field Marshal Haig was a. Distant cousin of hers and her sister married the nephew of Sir Henry Ponsonby, who was private secretary to Queen Victoria.
13:12 Speaker 05 Oh.
13:12 Speaker 02 So they were kind of like close to high society, but not quite in there until he became very famous and really hobnobbed with the.
13:20 Speaker 03 Yeah, because I thought they were kind of like pretty lower middle class, grew up in southwest London and very suburban, reasonably poor. And he, but he, his mum was a real stage mum.
13:30 Speaker 05 Yeah, so she was the Mrs Worthington, I think. She was the real Mrs Worthing.
13:33 Speaker 03 She pushed it.
13:34 Speaker 04 Mrs Worthington is.
13:35 Speaker 05 Oh, is a song, Don't Put Your Daughter on Stage, Mrs Worthington, is kind of a song told from the position of a producer, I think, in an audition, essentially kind of saying to this very pushy stage mum.
13:45 Speaker 03 Yeah.
13:45 Speaker 05 She's talentless, please stop putting your daughter on.
13:48 Speaker 03 But Noel Coward's career happened partly because of a medium spiritual guidance. So his mum went to a show at the Colosseum and an American celebrity medium, Anna Eva Fay, and his mum asked, should Noel, young Noel here, go back to school or should he stay as a child actor? And from beneath this big sheet that she was covered in, the medium Anna Fay said, keep acting.
14:14 Speaker 05 Oh, wow. I didn't know that.
14:16 Speaker 03 So that was a, I think, I suspect they probably would have kept him acting even if the medium had said, go back to school. But I suspect the ambition was strong.
14:25 Speaker 04 Still though, I haven't seen Bligh Spirit, but I think it's a very satirical about the spiritualism movement. Is that right?
14:31 Speaker 03 Yeah.
14:31 Speaker 04 Is that sort of parodying?
14:33 Speaker 05 It was a big drive towards it, wasn't it? The twenties and thirties.
14:36 Speaker 04 Yeah.
14:37 Speaker 05 Where people would have, yeah, I guess, I mean, that probably makes sense, doesn't it? That, but, but, but my dad even remembers his, his grandmother having her friends round for like a seance.
14:48 Speaker 02 Really?
14:49 Speaker 05 Like they'd go into the back room or something, yeah. And all these women would come in and try and contact the dead.
14:55 Speaker 04 Yeah.
14:55 Speaker 05 And it was, but it was kind of seen as a thing that people would do quite socially.
14:59 Speaker 04 Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like a book club of its day.
15:01 Speaker 05 The book club of its day, exactly.
15:03 Speaker 04 Exactly. His writing was extraordinary, the speed at which he wrote, because there are so many Noel Coward plays. There was a story that in 1935, in the summer of that year alone, he wrote nine plays. That's how quick. He knocked out a song called I'll See You Again, which Frank Sinatra recorded while he was stuck in a taxi in a traffic jam.
15:24 Speaker 05 It's similar to, I think, Elton John in the way that he apparently writes his songs in five minutes.
15:30 Speaker 04 I see.
15:31 Speaker 05 Tantrums and tiaras. It's something about that creativity. It's something quite useful about actually not allowing lots of time.
15:37 Speaker 04 Yes, and he also says the songs slightly come to him. He doesn't claim to have written Is that Elton John now? Yeah, yeah. Elton John will say that the songs sort of arrived to him.
15:46 Speaker 03 After the war, just to go back to his sort of post-war life, he spent a lot of time with the navy. And in fact-
15:56 Speaker 05 I bet he did.
15:58 Speaker 03 During the war as well. He frequently would just hitch a lift on Royal Navy ships.
16:03 Speaker 04 Really?
16:04 Speaker 03 Yeah, he would just-
16:06 Speaker 05 How did he get on that?
16:08 Speaker 03 Well, he-
16:08 Speaker 05 And how did he get off?
16:10 Speaker 03 He, um, he said, he did, spent a lot of his life as a tax exile because he was so financially successful in the first half of his life, that a lot of his later life was just moving around to different low-tax jurisdictions. And he once joined a ship in Bermuda called HM Dragon, and, or HMS Dragon maybe, and the captain said, "What the hell are you doing on board this ship?" And Coward replied that he was, quote, "exhausted, overworked, and on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and had joined the ship in order to be nursed back to health and strength and waited on hand and foot."
16:42 Speaker 03 And the captain not only gave him a lift to Trinidad, he gave him loads more lifts later on. They became friends. And it was just like-
16:48 Speaker 05 I suppose as well as a naval captain, you might be quite pleased that if somebody so witty and famous was suddenly on board-
16:54 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah, great. That's the entertainment.
16:56 Speaker 05 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, better than Enser or whatever it's called.
17:00 Speaker 04 Um, you say he was rich. He was so rich. He was making £50,000 a year, the equivalent of which today that would be 15 million per year that he was making. But in the late twenties. In the late twenties, and he was really burning through it though, so he had a lot of financial problems, hence moving to tax havens like Jamaica, where he moved right next door to Ian Fleming.
17:20 Speaker 05 Oh, yes.
17:21 Speaker 04 Yeah. Did he? Oh, the spy. Yeah, and there are stories that he turned down the role of Doctor No, that that was actually offered to him for the first bond.
17:28 Speaker 05 He was just called Doctor before they offered it to him.
17:32 Speaker 03 Doctor No, Coward, was the original, the former character.
17:41 Speaker 06 Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.
17:56 Speaker 07 People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.
18:07 Speaker 06 And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.
18:12 Speaker 08 One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.
18:18 Speaker 06 So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.
18:40 Speaker 04 Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that there is a Marvel superhero called The Gardener, whose superpower is that he is insanely good at gardening.
18:53 Speaker 03 So is it that he can grow things very, very fast?
18:56 Speaker 04 No, it's more that he is obsessed with gardening.
19:01 Speaker 04 And he is almost an immortal.
19:03 Speaker 02 Gardening is supposed to be good for you if you're getting older.
19:05 Speaker 03 Yeah.
19:06 Speaker 02 Like, it helps you live longer, doesn't it?
19:08 Speaker 04 Exactly. Well, yeah, and potentially forever.
19:12 Speaker 03 Forever.
19:13 Speaker 04 You give enough time to it. So he's part of this group called the Elders of the Universe, and basically the-
19:18 Speaker 03 There's another one who's really good at bowls.
19:24 Speaker 02 There's another one who's just really good at being racist.
19:29 Speaker 03 Absolutely ruins Christmas.
19:30 Speaker 04 Captain Crossword, come and say it.
19:34 Speaker 04 Yeah, okay, these are, each of them were the last survivors of their own race, and these were races that evolved just after the Big Bang. And the idea is that they have extended lifespans, but not because they're immortal, but because of a single-minded obsession. With a hobby.
19:51 Speaker 02 That's cool.
19:52 Speaker 05 Oh.
19:53 Speaker 03 That can be, I back that.
19:55 Speaker 04 There you go. So his hobby was gardening and horticulture. And the idea is that he would go from planet to planet and he would spend sort of up to a year, sort of terraforming it, making it green again.
20:05 Speaker 03 Yeah.
20:06 Speaker 02 Oh, that's nice.
20:06 Speaker 05 That seems like it might come into his own, actually, in our environmentally conscious age.
20:10 Speaker 04 There you go. Well, he should be a bigger character because actually in the original.
20:13 Speaker 05 I think I should play him.
20:16 Speaker 04 In the original stories, he and the other elders all had the Infinity Gems, which is what Thanos collects as part of the main Avengers storyline in order to wipe out all of.
20:26 Speaker 03 Oh, so he's one of the original holders of one of these?
20:29 Speaker 04 Yeah. And for some reason, when it came to the movie adaption, the gardener didn't quite get.
20:33 Speaker 02 Prequel. That's what I'm thinking.
20:35 Speaker 04 All right.
20:35 Speaker 02 Tom Allen, it's a gardener.
20:37 Speaker 04 Yeah.
20:37 Speaker 05 Yeah, I'd love that.
20:38 Speaker 04 Yeah.
20:39 Speaker 05 I've seen him with like a big wide brimmed hat.
20:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:41 Speaker 05 You know, the sort of thing that.
20:42 Speaker 04 Yeah.
20:43 Speaker 05 Old ladies used to.
20:43 Speaker 04 Oh, yes, yeah. Gloves on.
20:46 Speaker 05 Obviously floral gloves and one of those kneeling pads.
20:49 Speaker 04 I've got, I've got one.
20:50 Speaker 05 They are very useful.
20:51 Speaker 04 Yeah.
20:52 Speaker 05 The best ones are when you've got a handle at the side to push yourself up.
20:54 Speaker 04 Oh, I know one of those.
20:56 Speaker 05 It's like an upside down piano stool, really. It's just nice.
20:59 Speaker 04 That's really helpful.
21:00 Speaker 05 And then you've got to just have a couple of beats to be like, oof, with my knees.
21:03 Speaker 04 Yeah, absolutely.
21:03 Speaker 05 And then carry on.
21:04 Speaker 04 Okay, we're talking to a seasoned gardener here, I'm guessing.
21:06 Speaker 05 Well, it's salty maybe, but I don't know about seasoned.
21:11 Speaker 04 You do have a garden, though, that you love to tend to.
21:13 Speaker 05 I've got, I've gotten into gardening. I like to use the past tense of got. And I've gotten into gardening in the last sort of four years since having my own place. For a long time I lived with my parents and I didn't have my own space then. And so now I do and it's quite nice just to, well, just mess around really. I'm a proud novice with it, but I find it very interesting.
21:34 Speaker 02 So on famous gardeners, who's the most famous gardener in the UK?
21:38 Speaker 05 Alan Titchmarsh.
21:39 Speaker 02 Correct. What has Alan Titchmarsh got in common with Elvis Presley?
21:44 Speaker 04 Ooh. Okay.
21:47 Speaker 03 Oh, from Memphis, that's obvious.
21:50 Speaker 03 Both sex gods.
21:52 Speaker 02 Okay, I'll give you that. It's slightly related to that.
21:55 Speaker 03 Poets? He writes poetry, Titchmarsh.
21:57 Speaker 02 It's not that.
21:58 Speaker 04 Okay. Both been to jail. Well, Elvis had a song about it. Titchmarsh was done up for years, wasn't he?
22:04 Speaker 02 For years, yeah. That's why he has all those tattoos.
22:07 Speaker 04 Yeah.
22:09 Speaker 05 Covers them up for the show, of course.
22:15 Speaker 05 One for every man he killed in Christmas.
22:17 Speaker 04 It's how he got into gardening, was burying the bodies.
22:22 Speaker 02 The answer is that their lower halves have been censored on television.
22:27 Speaker 05 Really?
22:28 Speaker 02 So Elvis, obviously, when he became big, they would only show him from the waist up so that people didn't get too excited. But Alan Titchmarsh has been censored.
22:39 Speaker 04 From the waist down.
22:44 Speaker 02 They have censored his trousers because he wears jeans. And in North Korea, they don't like jeans being shown because it's a symbol of America. So they show his programmes, but they blur out his trousers.
22:58 Speaker 03 But that means he's free to broadcast Winnie the Pooh style.
23:02 Speaker 05 Yeah.
23:03 Speaker 03 Shows to the North Korean networks.
23:06 Speaker 05 He's there.
23:07 Speaker 02 You'd have to paint his legs blue.
23:11 Speaker 03 I've seen Titchmarsh do karaoke.
23:13 Speaker 02 Have you?
23:14 Speaker 04 In person?
23:15 Speaker 03 In person.
23:16 Speaker 05 Wow.
23:16 Speaker 03 I don't mean to clang.
23:17 Speaker 05 What did he sing? Something green, green grass?
23:20 Speaker 03 It was, um, oh, what's the one? I killed a man in Reno.
23:27 Speaker 04 Gangster's Paradise.
23:32 Speaker 03 Yeah, I don't remember the song, but it was, uh, yeah.
23:35 Speaker 04 Wow, that's very cool. Well, there's other reasons that Alan Titchmarsh is a sex god, by the way, which is that as well as writing over something like 70 gardening books, he's written a series of novels.
23:46 Speaker 05 Yes.
23:46 Speaker 04 And they are a race scene.
23:48 Speaker 05 Are they?
23:49 Speaker 04 Yeah, in fact, I don't know if you remember, but we had Lou Sanders read Morrissey's contribution to the world of sex scenes. Tom, do you mind a little extract?
24:00 Speaker 02 Here we go.
24:01 Speaker 05 I think, um, I have met Alan a few times and he's always very charming, as you'd imagine. And, um, and he did say to me, because I was talking to him about audiobooks.
24:12 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
24:12 Speaker 05 And he did say he was very aware of his more intimate scenes when he had to sit in a booth.
24:18 Speaker 04 Yes.
24:19 Speaker 05 And read them out to an engineer. So as an example, as an example of what he might have been reading, there is a little bit here. She planted moist, hot kisses all over his body. Beads of sweat began to appear on Guy's forehead, forehead, as he became more entangled in the lissum limbs of this human boa constrictor.
24:42 Speaker 05 For fully fifteen minutes, their mutual passion heightened with groans, sighs and liquid noises. Oh my god.
24:53 Speaker 02 Wow, can I just say, when you're describing limbs, why go for the one animal that doesn't have any limbs?
25:00 Speaker 05 Little lissum, lissum limb.
25:02 Speaker 02 I don't know what lissum means.
25:03 Speaker 05 And I've never heard that word before.
25:04 Speaker 03 Lissum is kind of young and firm and strong, isn't it?
25:08 Speaker 05 Is it?
25:08 Speaker 04 Is it?
25:09 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
25:10 Speaker 04 I love that Titchmarsh is too highbrow for us, we don't know the vocabulary.
25:13 Speaker 05 I know, I bet he'll am.
25:15 Speaker 04 He's a very educated man.
25:17 Speaker 02 I like the way it begins with she planted kisses, like, because obviously he's a gardener.
25:22 Speaker 05 Absolutely. Oh, every, every choice, wonderful.
25:26 Speaker 04 So he was runner up in the nineteen ninety eight Literary Review Bad Sex Awards. And you're right, he felt very uncomfortable reading them. He said, particularly with the sheet of glass between you and a very large bearded man, twiddling knobs as you say the words.
25:43 Speaker 04 He found it uncomfortable.
25:44 Speaker 02 I think it's a bit unfair, that bad sex thing, because they go for celebs, don't they? There must be loads of like not famous people who are writing worse sex.
25:51 Speaker 04 Well, to be fair, the winner that year was Sebastian Fawkes.
25:54 Speaker 05 I was gonna say, Birdsong has got lots of that sort of, that's very interesting.
25:58 Speaker 03 Birdsong's got some very fruity stuff in it.
26:00 Speaker 05 Very fruity. I remember reading that when I was about seventeen and thinking, oh gosh, that seems like a lot of effort.
26:07 Speaker 03 Can I ask you about a couple of things you might or might not use in your garden, Tom?
26:11 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah, absolutely.
26:12 Speaker 03 Shall we give it a go? Right. Do you ever use worm poo tea bags?
26:18 Speaker 05 Um, no, I think I have heard of this sort of thing. Worms are very important, aren't they?
26:22 Speaker 03 Worms are vital and obviously they eat soil, they poo it out, they, you know, they help circulate things, they aerate, they do all sorts of. Stuff. You can get tea bags with worm castings, i.e. worm poo, where you you'd literally make a cup of tea out of it for your plant. And it really helps your plant.
26:37 Speaker 04 Really?
26:37 Speaker 03 Yeah.
26:38 Speaker 04 Oh.
26:38 Speaker 03 Lion urine.
26:39 Speaker 05 Well, that's the thing, isn't it? Because people say to keep away foxes or other animals, if you want them out of your garden.
26:45 Speaker 04 An apex predator.
26:46 Speaker 05 You need an apex. You can't. The people say, oh, just go and wee in the garden. And then like, no, they need men to wee in the garden. It's male urine they respond to. And apparently that's not, that's won't do it. Apparently you need to go to the zoo and ask.
26:56 Speaker 04 Yeah.
26:56 Speaker 05 And get a lion to wee into a cup.
27:01 Speaker 04 Or you could get the piss off plant. Have you heard of that?
27:03 Speaker 05 What's that?
27:04 Speaker 04 Piss off plant is a plant that's native to southern and eastern Africa. And it is a plant that supposedly repels dogs and cats from coming near it because of the aroma that it emits. So if you had that in your garden, most likely they would smell it and never come back again.
27:20 Speaker 05 Oh, I'll get one of those. That's pretty good. What a great idea.
27:22 Speaker 04 Um. Do you have an ornamental hermit in your garden?
27:26 Speaker 05 No, I don't have anything like that. That was like a sort of little house, wasn't it? Where a little.
27:31 Speaker 04 Well, back in the 18th century, this was a real life human that you would bring into your garden. Yeah. They would dress like a druid and they would just be sat and they would have a contract to live there and.
27:43 Speaker 04 Negotiations. Ferocious negotiations every autumn as the.
27:46 Speaker 05 Yes. Well, look, I'm not going to do this for another year unless you revise my terms.
27:52 Speaker 04 No, yeah, it's been in 1797, there was a thing written up that said the hermit is never to leave the place or hold conversation with anyone for seven years, during which he is neither to wash himself or cleanse himself in any way whatsoever.
28:04 Speaker 03 Yeah, my agent's got a problem with this clause of.
28:07 Speaker 04 The agent lives a bit further down the garden in another little folly.
28:12 Speaker 02 Do we know why people did that?
28:14 Speaker 03 Well, I think it, I think it's a kind of.
28:17 Speaker 02 It would be like landed gentry would have this person. You wouldn't have it in your garden in Hackney, would you?
28:22 Speaker 03 I think, no, exactly. I think what it is, is the hermit is a symbol of a wild and ancient way of living. And it's kind of they are reflecting on history and on humanity and on progress and the countryside and, you know, the wilderness. And I, I think that's why it's cool to have a hermit. Because they kind of hark back to that. Yeah.
28:41 Speaker 02 Okay.
28:42 Speaker 05 There's always been that kind of sentimentality, isn't there, around that kind of pastoral?
28:45 Speaker 03 Yeah.
28:45 Speaker 05 Idol.
28:46 Speaker 03 There was one place which had a hermit, which turned out to be a mechanical hermit. Genuinely, I think it was an 18th century aristocrat. Quite clearly.
28:56 Speaker 03 It was like a very, very, very crude model robo-hermit that they had in their thing.
29:02 Speaker 02 Here's another famous gardener. So this is a king called Era Emiti, who was in ancient Sumer. And what would happen in ancient Sumer is you would get people who would tell the future. And if they saw a bad omen, like maybe the king's gonna die, you would put someone else on the throne for 100 days and then you take over again. So this guy, Era Emiti, decided to put his gardener on the throne for 100 days because there'd been a bad omen. And then he died after eating some hot porridge and his gardener then reigned ancient Sumer for 24 years.
29:37 Speaker 05 Wow. Wow. Just because he didn't blow on it.
29:40 Speaker 02 I guess so.
29:41 Speaker 03 You've got all your porridge.
29:43 Speaker 05 Yeah.
29:43 Speaker 03 That's incredible.
29:45 Speaker 02 I know.
29:46 Speaker 03 I guess there wasn't a successor in place who would naturally take over.
29:49 Speaker 02 Well, he's the king now, right?
29:51 Speaker 03 Yeah, you're right.
29:51 Speaker 02 So what are you gonna do?
29:53 Speaker 03 That's so funny.
30:01 Speaker 03 Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Andy. My fact is, in 1920, the king of Greece died after trying to break up a fight between a dog and a monkey. This is the only royal death I've found which involved a monkey at all, actually. Let alone a fight between a dog and a monkey.
30:20 Speaker 02 Okay.
30:20 Speaker 03 This was King Alexander of Greece, and he had a dog. He had a German shepherd. And one day, he was having a walk in the, I think, the palace grounds. And I think a Barbary ape, quite an aggressive, yeah, not a tidler of a monkey.
30:37 Speaker 05 Oh, no, this isn't like Bubbles.
30:39 Speaker 03 No, no, no, this is, this is proper.
30:40 Speaker 02 They're very naughty Barbary apes, I can say. They all, yeah.
30:44 Speaker 05 What is it naughty?
30:47 Speaker 03 They'll kill your dog.
30:49 Speaker 05 Slaughtering your dog in front of you.
30:51 Speaker 03 Yeah, or your king.
30:52 Speaker 02 They have them on Gibraltar, don't they?
30:54 Speaker 03 Yes.
30:54 Speaker 02 And I went up there with a pushchair with my daughter, who was very young. And basically, they will just steal everything, everything that's not held down, they'll steal it.
31:03 Speaker 03 You got her back, though?
31:05 Speaker 02 No, she still lives there.
31:09 Speaker 03 She's the ape queen now.
31:11 Speaker 02 That's why I voted for Brexit, I don't want it to be Spanish.
31:17 Speaker 03 Yeah, so anyway, this ape and this dog were in a fight. He was trying to separate them, at which point the ape's wife turned up and sunk her fangs into King Alexander's leg.
31:26 Speaker 02 Oh, no.
31:26 Speaker 03 And I think some days later, he died, he'd become ill and they had swithered over what to do, the doctors, and so. So he died, and this produced huge geopolitical consequences. Winston Churchill later wrote, "It is perhaps no exaggeration to remark that a quarter of a million persons died of this monkey's bite."
31:43 Speaker 02 Really?
31:44 Speaker 03 Wow.
31:44 Speaker 05 Yeah. Because the Greek civil war.
31:48 Speaker 03 Well, it all led to a lot of unhappiness and conflict inside Greece. They got back the previous king.
31:55 Speaker 02 Because what had happened, the previous king was very pro-German and his son was pro-German, his eldest son. And so Britain and Russia and probably France got rid of those guys and brought in this guy who wasn't expecting to be king. Like, he was just thought he was going to spend his days gardening or just having fun.
32:11 Speaker 05 Having a lovely life.
32:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, and then suddenly he's king. And then, you know, okay, well, now we've got our puppet who's in charge, but then he dies and then they bring the old people back and it all goes to shit.
32:22 Speaker 03 That's basically what happened, yeah. He fought this war against the Turks, which went disastrously wrong. Hundreds of thousands of deaths, the royalists were kicked out. And then the European great powers just started picking the Greek royal family. And then eventually, things got a bit more democratic. And the Greeks, in 1862, had this vote for a new king, a kind of national referendum. And they, almost universally, they chose Prince Alfred of England, who I believe was one of Victoria's sons.
32:49 Speaker 02 Yes.
32:50 Speaker 03 He won 95% of the votes cast.
32:53 Speaker 05 Sounds like a fix.
32:54 Speaker 02 Wow.
32:54 Speaker 03 He said, "No, no, thank you, I don't want to do it."
32:57 Speaker 02 He was the throne of Greece.
32:59 Speaker 05 Yeah, but imagine he probably had a nice house somewhere, wouldn't he?
33:02 Speaker 03 I'm sure he's already got a nice, you're right.
33:04 Speaker 02 What year was that?
33:05 Speaker 03 That was 1862, so this is.
33:07 Speaker 05 A lot happening in the 1860s, wasn't there?
33:09 Speaker 03 Oh.
33:09 Speaker 05 Going on.
33:10 Speaker 03 Bucket.
33:10 Speaker 05 Was that unification of Germany around then?
33:12 Speaker 02 Yeah.
33:12 Speaker 05 And then formation of Italy?
33:14 Speaker 03 Yes.
33:15 Speaker 05 Also, my house was built?
33:17 Speaker 04 Really?
33:17 Speaker 03 So some major events.
33:18 Speaker 05 Major, major thing.
33:19 Speaker 04 So your garden was laid out the first time?
33:22 Speaker 05 Yeah, by Prince Alfred. And actually, around the corner from me, Napoleon III came to live.
33:26 Speaker 03 Is that so? Really?
33:28 Speaker 05 Wow. So there you go.
33:29 Speaker 03 So we've had a huge decade.
33:31 Speaker 05 Huge, big decade.
33:32 Speaker 03 But basically Alfred was pressured into saying no, because Britain, France and Russia had all decreed, nobody's going to accept this throne.
33:37 Speaker 05 Nobody wants it, get over it.
33:39 Speaker 03 And every candidate said no, until they got to Prince Wilhelm of Denmark, of the Glucksberg House. And he had received six votes from the entire population of Greece, and he was then chosen to be the king.
33:50 Speaker 05 Oh, that is unfortunate.
33:51 Speaker 03 I know.
33:52 Speaker 04 I think he was 18th highest voted person in that list.
33:55 Speaker 03 He came 18th.
33:56 Speaker 04 Yeah.
33:57 Speaker 03 But various people had just written, "A Russian king, please", or whatever. They'd just selected, like, they'd just written it. So he came almost dead last, and yet, he then was king for 50 years. King Gimmick Kingface was who they really wanted. Yeah. And then he lasted until 1930, lasted 50 years.
34:12 Speaker 05 1930?
34:13 Speaker 03 13.
34:14 Speaker 05 13, oh.
34:15 Speaker 03 And then he was assassinated by either a socialist or a lunatic, and it's not clear which, apparently. Not necessarily. Not to get political.
34:25 Speaker 05 A lot of assassinations happening around that sort of area, weren't there, at that time?
34:28 Speaker 03 Oh, yes.
34:29 Speaker 05 They loved it.
34:30 Speaker 03 A vexed, vexed period.
34:32 Speaker 05 Vexed period in the south east of Europe, yeah.
34:34 Speaker 04 I found another monkey bite death.
34:37 Speaker 05 Oh, did you?
34:39 Speaker 03 Didn't expect to find one, but I tried hard and I got there. Do you even, you know the character Grizzly Adams?
34:45 Speaker 04 Grizzly Adams?
34:46 Speaker 03 He was... I'm not making a bad pun.
34:47 Speaker 05 No, that would be good.
34:49 Speaker 04 So Grizzly Adams in America, I think he's quite a well-known historical character. Um, so he was a Californian mountain man, he was a trainer of grizzly bears. And he used to just do acts, you know, kind of like a P T Barnum kind of thing. So he made pets with quite a few of these bears that he thought were friendly.
35:07 Speaker 05 I can't see this going, yeah, I can't see where this is gonna go.
35:10 Speaker 03 He was killed by a monkey, that's like...
35:12 Speaker 05 Oh, yes.
35:14 Speaker 04 So, okay.
35:16 Speaker 03 Don't take your eyes off the threat of the monkeys.
35:17 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
35:19 Speaker 04 So he got attacked by a grizzly in Sierra Nevada.
35:23 Speaker 02 Oh, but the monkey was the one who set the grizzly on him.
35:25 Speaker 04 No, the monkey comes in later. So his scalp was dislodged in this attack and it left a silver dollar-sized impression in his skull, just above his forehead. Then he had all these other grizzlies that he made friends with. Anyway, he was re-injured several times in the head and it opened up the wound, which meant bits of brain tissue were exposed.
35:46 Speaker 02 Oh, damn.
35:47 Speaker 04 And then.
35:49 Speaker 03 Is he still going with the bear's shtick?
35:51 Speaker 04 He's still going with the bear's shtick.
35:53 Speaker 03 Okay.
35:53 Speaker 04 And then Grizzly Adams is on tour with a circus when a monkey that he was trying to train jumped up and bit him in the brain.
36:02 Speaker 03 Oh, god.
36:03 Speaker 04 Not in the head, in the brain.
36:05 Speaker 02 Well, you don't have any nerves in your brain, so you wouldn't even feel it.
36:07 Speaker 04 Yep. So anyway.
36:09 Speaker 03 You know it was happening, I think.
36:11 Speaker 02 If he came from behind.
36:13 Speaker 04 It's possible. And so he died October 25th, 1860.
36:18 Speaker 02 It's a grizzly day.
36:18 Speaker 05 1860?
36:19 Speaker 04 1860.
36:20 Speaker 05 Here was another day. There goes another big thing.
36:23 Speaker 03 Um, how extraordinary, Dan. If you hadn't have said it was a monkey, I wouldn't have seen that coming at all.
36:28 Speaker 04 I know, right? It's a real plot twist at the end there.
36:30 Speaker 03 It really is.
36:31 Speaker 05 Wow, horrifying end.
36:33 Speaker 02 Um, here's some people. William III of England, Alexander III of Scotland, Prince Alfonso, Portugal, Frederick Augustus II of Saxony, Duke Geoffrey of Brittany, Isabella of Aragon, Leopold V of Austria, Louis IV of France, William the Conqueror, they all died the same way.
36:48 Speaker 03 Monkeys?
36:48 Speaker 02 Not monkeys.
36:52 Speaker 03 At what point do we start suspecting the monkeys are up to something big?
36:58 Speaker 02 This is something that does away with lots of royalties and it's very guessable.
37:03 Speaker 05 Oh, is it gout or something along those lines?
37:05 Speaker 02 Not gout.
37:05 Speaker 03 Living high on the hog.
37:07 Speaker 05 Yeah. Is it sort of explosion or some sort of?
37:10 Speaker 02 Oh, because William the Conqueror did explode, but that was after his death. Yeah.
37:14 Speaker 05 He got, he got rather obese, I think, didn't he?
37:17 Speaker 02 Right.
37:17 Speaker 05 Um, they couldn't bury him straight away. And so when the monks came to bury him in his concrete tomb, they sort of shoved him in it and then he exploded.
37:26 Speaker 04 William the Conqueror?
37:27 Speaker 05 I'm pretty sure, yeah.
37:28 Speaker 02 William the Conqueror, yeah, he definitely exploded in the funeral.
37:30 Speaker 04 Concrete?
37:31 Speaker 05 Or, it wouldn't be concrete, no stone, sorry.
37:33 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah, okay.
37:34 Speaker 05 That's a bit of a story you wanted to pick up on?
37:36 Speaker 02 The Romans had concrete, Andy.
37:38 Speaker 03 I know the Romans had concrete, but I wasn't aware that the Normans had.
37:41 Speaker 05 It wasn't a brutalist coffin.
37:44 Speaker 03 I just want to go with something really simple.
37:48 Speaker 02 Anyway, the answer is falling off a horse.
37:51 Speaker 03 Oh.
37:52 Speaker 02 That is a big old wave that people died in the past.
37:55 Speaker 03 That is.
37:56 Speaker 02 Alexander III probably was riding along a high, treacherous coastal path, having drank a lot of Bordeaux wine.
38:03 Speaker 03 Good for him.
38:03 Speaker 02 And just went straight off it.
38:05 Speaker 03 Right.
38:05 Speaker 05 What, fell off the hill?
38:07 Speaker 02 Just jumped straight off it, yeah. You would think that the horse would stop, but yeah. Problem is that quite often when these people die, there's a big sort of, something happens afterwards, like happened with this Greek guy. So when Alexander III died, that started the First War of Scottish Independence, essentially.
38:26 Speaker 03 Right.
38:26 Speaker 02 So, you know, it's quite a big deal when these kings die, even though they're just people.
38:30 Speaker 03 At what point is anyone suggesting a helmet for horse riding?
38:34 Speaker 02 Oh, you don't see that, I mean, apart from knights, you don't see people with like cycle helmets in the past, do you?
38:40 Speaker 03 Yeah, but knights do have protection. You just think, like, how many regal deaths do they have to have before they say, I think we should say, if you're the king or queen, you have to wear a helmet on your horse. Yeah. Well, how about seat belts? Horse seat belts? Yeah.
38:56 Speaker 03 Is that safer? You're not going to fall if you're really tied tight. If your horse falls over though, and you're seat belted on, I just wonder if there's.
39:04 Speaker 05 You'd wait for the fire brigade to come along.
39:05 Speaker 03 I feel like there might be a reason why the horse seatbelt hasn't been invented, or maybe it has.
39:09 Speaker 02 Stirrups is effectively the horse seatbelt, because it really helps you hold yourself in place when you're in the stirrups.
39:15 Speaker 03 Look at you, you've been riding a horse recently for the first.
39:18 Speaker 02 I've ridden one horse.
39:18 Speaker 03 You've ridden a horse one time, you're wearing it as Mr. Equestrian here.
39:22 Speaker 02 All I'm going to say is don't go off any cliffs, so, you know.
39:25 Speaker 05 Despite how much Bordeaux wine you drink.
39:29 Speaker 05 That's true, isn't it? How do people, maybe this is a very graphic question, but how do people die when they fall off a horse? Do they get trampled in the legs?
39:37 Speaker 02 I think it's bang on the head.
39:39 Speaker 05 Bang on the head.
39:40 Speaker 02 Because actually, you're quite, as someone who's ridden a horse.
39:43 Speaker 05 Of course, of course. Well, you would know, that's why I ask.
39:46 Speaker 02 You're quite high up.
39:48 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah.
39:49 Speaker 02 Like, and they do, like, my horse at one stage saw a lady horse. And so started galloping towards her.
39:57 Speaker 05 Oh, no.
39:57 Speaker 02 And I almost shit myself.
40:00 Speaker 04 What an embarrassing first horse ride if it mounted the feet of a horse. And you just have to sit there like a war statue.
40:08 Speaker 03 That's amazing. You're riding two horses at once.
40:10 Speaker 04 That's incredible.
40:17 Speaker 06 Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.
40:32 Speaker 07 People would always think I was lactose intolerant. So I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.
40:43 Speaker 06 And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.
40:48 Speaker 08 One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.
40:54 Speaker 06 So join us and hear their stories and more. Because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.
41:16 Speaker 02 Okay, it's time for our final fact of the show, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that one of the most popular celebrity tailors of the 1950s was ironically called Nudie.
41:31 Speaker 02 This guy's a character. I reckon quite a few people might have heard of him, but I'd never heard of him before. He was the first person to spot rhinestones on clothing. Um, so if you've ever seen one of those sort of rhinestone cowboy suits that they wore in America in the, what, the 50, 60, 70s, uh, he will have made it. So, um, he made suits for Elvis, he made them for shit. Alan Titchmarsh?
41:57 Speaker 02 Uh, Elton John, who we mentioned before, Hank Williams, John Lennon, there's the who's who of pop music.
42:03 Speaker 05 It's everybody, yeah.
42:04 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:04 Speaker 05 Mmm.
42:05 Speaker 02 Staggered.
42:05 Speaker 05 Liberace, I imagine?
42:07 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
42:07 Speaker 05 Inevitably.
42:08 Speaker 04 It was sort of everyone. In fact, I was thinking, cause I, you know, the term rhinestone cowboy.
42:13 Speaker 05 Glen Campbell.
42:14 Speaker 04 Glen Campbell, um, that was originally written by a man called Larry Weiss and, uh, it was, it was in tribute to Nudie.
42:21 Speaker 02 Really?
42:22 Speaker 04 Yeah, because that was a thing that all of these country music stars kept asking for. They were like, Nudie, more rhinestone, more rhinestone, when they were asking for their suits to be tailored. So that song is a-
42:32 Speaker 05 Strangely, they didn't put it in more of a sentence, though. They just went, more rhinestone, more rhinestone.
42:36 Speaker 02 Oh, these lads, you know what they're like.
42:38 Speaker 05 More rhinestone, Nudie.
42:42 Speaker 04 That was, it was a guy called Lefty Frizzle who asked for more rhinestone, put a few more rhinestone, Nudie, put more rhinestone.
42:49 Speaker 02 Rhinestones are stones from the Rhine, by the way, just in case.
42:52 Speaker 06 Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.
43:07 Speaker 07 People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.
43:18 Speaker 06 And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.
43:23 Speaker 08 One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.
43:29 Speaker 06 So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.
43:49 Speaker 02 Basically didn't know what a rhinestone was. Yes, I never knew what a rhinestone was either.
43:52 Speaker 03 It's now just a piece of coloured glass, basically, but they were kind of proper rock crystals.
43:57 Speaker 02 Apparently you just get these little colourful pebbles on the banks of the Rhine and people used to put them on stuff for decoration.
44:03 Speaker 03 Yeah, and these days you melt them on to clothes with heat.
44:07 Speaker 02 Do you?
44:07 Speaker 03 So you have a little glue layer and then you just heat them up and you just shove them on.
44:12 Speaker 02 But yeah, Nudie, he was born Nudja Kocliarenko in Kiev in 1902 and he moved to America, but he was really into his tailoring and then when he was processed, supposedly according to the story, when he was processed through Ellis Island, they changed his name to Nudie, which I'm not sure how often that actually happened and usually it was people just changing their name to sell more American themselves.
44:36 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
44:37 Speaker 02 And then he came to America, opened an underwear shop, selling G-strings and pasties to strippers.
44:44 Speaker 03 Very broad range of, uh, West Cornwall, was it?
44:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
44:47 Speaker 05 They don't call pasties, they just think she put on your nipples.
44:50 Speaker 03 They are called pasties.
44:51 Speaker 05 Oh, okay, I just thought, okay, at least you wouldn't get hungry and they are quite handy, you've got the whole meal running through them.
44:58 Speaker 03 If you've got one hand on the pole and the other...
45:00 Speaker 05 And then you just hold on to the cross.
45:01 Speaker 03 Clutching it.
45:02 Speaker 02 I think the strippers in Bolton do put pasties on their nipples, but, um, so then he...
45:08 Speaker 05 I thought they're all the more popular for it as well, people love pasties, they love pies.
45:11 Speaker 02 Yeah. He then had surgery when he was in his 40s and lost all of his money because he had to pay for the surgery in America. And then he thought, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna make suits for celebrities. And he got in touch with a guy called Tex Williams. Tex Williams auctioned off his horse and used the money to buy Nudie a sewing machine and they went into business together.
45:33 Speaker 03 Well, you would have got on with Tex, wouldn't you?
45:35 Speaker 02 Why?
45:36 Speaker 03 Both love horses.
45:40 Speaker 02 I'm gonna start coming in a rhinestone suit now.
45:45 Speaker 02 But yeah, I'd never heard this guy and he was a pretty big deal.
45:49 Speaker 03 Quite the guy. Apparently in the early stage when he was selling the pasties to strippers, he sold also tailor-made G-strings.
45:56 Speaker 05 You don't want them to not fit.
46:00 Speaker 05 What have you got round your knees?
46:05 Speaker 05 Oh, that happened again. I was just eating a pasty.
46:10 Speaker 05 Oh dear.
46:11 Speaker 02 And the name Nudie became synonymous with these amazing suits. And actually, the Nudie name is still alive, thanks to his granddaughter, Jamie Nudie, who seems to have taken his first name as her surname now. I'm not quite sure how.
46:26 Speaker 02 So now they do still exist, but they mostly make t-shirts and coffee mugs with the name Nudie on it. They don't really make so many clothes anymore.
46:34 Speaker 03 His cars were absolutely bananas. And I only say this because I've seen one of them, I think in the flesh.
46:42 Speaker 02 No.
46:42 Speaker 03 In the Nashville Country Music Hall of Fame.
46:45 Speaker 02 Oh, wow.
46:46 Speaker 03 And it's...
46:47 Speaker 02 I didn't know you'd been there.
46:49 Speaker 03 I mean, fifteen years ago.
46:50 Speaker 02 I thought I'd heard every one of your anecdotes.
46:53 Speaker 03 No, no, no, no.
46:54 Speaker 04 Why do you keep telling us the same three then?
46:58 Speaker 03 I feel like we're getting distracted from my fourth anecdote.
47:03 Speaker 05 All these facts.
47:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, go on, you saw that, didn't you?
47:06 Speaker 03 It's an insane car. It's got eighteen pistols distributed around it. They're kind of built into the doors and things like that on the inside. It's got twelve hundred silver dollars glued on at various points all over it. My memory might be tricking me. I feel like it's got a bison's horns on the front.
47:23 Speaker 02 Oh, wow.
47:24 Speaker 03 Where you'd have the Mercedes sign or whatever, it's got one of those. I mean, it's an absolutely loopy.
47:30 Speaker 02 Well, you would plug in your electric vehicle.
47:32 Speaker 03 That's right. Yeah, yeah.
47:33 Speaker 05 Yes.
47:35 Speaker 03 Yeah.
47:35 Speaker 04 He was very obsessed with fashion, as a lot of celebrities are. Tom, you are one of the best dressed comedians.
47:42 Speaker 05 Well, that's very generous to say fashion. I've always liked suiting and tailoring. I don't know, I think because it makes me feel a certain way, sort of stand in a certain way. And I guess that's part of what tailoring has always done for people. But yes, I do like to wear a suit.
47:58 Speaker 04 Yeah, I used to wear ties a lot.
48:00 Speaker 05 Hmm.
48:01 Speaker 04 Um, and I've stopped in recent years and I feel less good as a human.
48:04 Speaker 05 Oh.
48:04 Speaker 04 As a result, so I think I might get back into it.
48:06 Speaker 05 Well, they're a flash of colour, really, I suppose, or a bit of variation in the. Well, you always wore a black one, didn't you? Oh. Just black. Yeah. With a white shirt.
48:15 Speaker 04 With a white shirt.
48:16 Speaker 05 Yes, I remember those days.
48:17 Speaker 04 Yes.
48:17 Speaker 05 Very, um, Mormon.
48:21 Speaker 03 Saves time, doesn't it?
48:22 Speaker 05 Yeah.
48:22 Speaker 03 So you don't have to change your clothes at the end of the gig. You could just get out and fly out the audience some way out there, yeah.
48:27 Speaker 05 Pop the old badge on. Good to go. Hand out those books.
48:33 Speaker 04 I did, well, what's interesting is I read a study recently is that apparently when you wear a tie, it stops your blood flow by seven point, point five percent.
48:41 Speaker 05 Really? Well, that, that gets me high, so I like that.
48:44 Speaker 04 That's what I'm missing.
48:45 Speaker 05 That's what I'm doing.
48:46 Speaker 04 What, to your, to your brain?
48:48 Speaker 03 Yeah, so you've been operating with constricted blood flow to your brain for some years.
48:52 Speaker 04 They did MRI scans on 15 men who were wearing ties and 15 men who weren't.
48:56 Speaker 05 Imagine them going to the MRI machine.
48:59 Speaker 05 Very smart clothes. Should I pop my umbrella and butter hat in?
49:03 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, and that's, that's what they concluded. So it is, it is letting less and it will give you headaches and dizziness and nausea if you wear a tie more so.
49:12 Speaker 05 I love all those things. To me.
49:13 Speaker 04 Yeah.
49:14 Speaker 05 There, um, I, I find now it's evolved into the, the, the work wear of men going to work is, um, rather than suits, it is, uh, some skinny chinos, a quarter zip, uh, jumper.
49:26 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah.
49:26 Speaker 05 Uh, with a shirt underneath, open neck, and then a lanyard instead of a tie. So people don't wear ties, they just wear lanyards, which I think will evolve maybe one day into something else or. But we've all become quite utilitarian, I think, in our clothing. I think we've all become quite practical.
49:40 Speaker 04 Hmm.
49:40 Speaker 05 I think for a long time, there was an air of flamboyance about a lot of men's clothing, which isn't afforded so much now. I think if you went out, even me wearing a tie, people are like, oh, all right.
49:50 Speaker 05 We're off somewhere, I go, I don't know, we're having a wedding today. I'm literally just wearing the same things my, my dad might have worn, you know, it's not, but it can seem like.
49:58 Speaker 02 Yeah.
49:58 Speaker 03 I was looking into tight clothes or snug clothes and clothing innovations.
50:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
50:02 Speaker 03 Because it's really fun. If you look in somewhere like New Scientist for all the clothing inventions, it's all like, this is the clothing of tomorrow. And so in 2007, Philips, the electronics people, they invented auto snug clothing, right? Which is where it's a cloth with muscle wires woven through the fabric. You put it up to the power and it adjusts until your trousers are the exact right size for you.
50:26 Speaker 02 That's good.
50:26 Speaker 03 And then you know exactly what trousers you need from now on.
50:29 Speaker 05 Oh.
50:29 Speaker 03 Yeah, I think that's great.
50:30 Speaker 02 That's useful. I can imagine it going wrong, though.
50:33 Speaker 03 Oh, absolutely, yeah. Like, hundreds of people were electrocuted, very badly scorched during this. But it's also, we have a tape measure. We have the technology to find out what size trousers someone needs. It's not like until 2007, people were wearing trousers in the size of a house.
50:50 Speaker 02 The other thing is it's different in different countries, right?
50:53 Speaker 05 Yeah.
50:53 Speaker 02 So I bought a pair of large underpants in America and a pair in Japan. And I can tell you, one of those, way too big for me, and the other one, I can't even squeeze into.
51:05 Speaker 03 This is why James has his G-strings tailored.
51:12 Speaker 02 Speaking of putting metal inside clothes, that's what lame is. I didn't know this. So Nudie in 1957 made Elvis Presley a $10,000 gold lame suit. And lame is where you get your fabric, but then you put metallic fibres into it.
51:31 Speaker 03 Oh.
51:32 Speaker 02 I didn't know what that was.
51:33 Speaker 03 Okay.
51:34 Speaker 02 Where else is lame used in the sporting world?
51:38 Speaker 03 So gold being woven through.
51:40 Speaker 02 Or any metal woven through.
51:41 Speaker 03 Woven through fabric.
51:42 Speaker 02 Fabric.
51:42 Speaker 05 Not horse riding. Aerodynamic stuff?
51:45 Speaker 04 Nope. I've got a wild theory.
51:48 Speaker 02 Go on.
51:48 Speaker 04 Is it tennis rackets?
51:49 Speaker 02 I thought you were gonna get it, but no.
51:52 Speaker 05 Formula One?
51:53 Speaker 02 No, it's not that. It's used in fencing.
51:56 Speaker 03 Oh, of course.
51:57 Speaker 02 Because you need to, when someone stabs you with their sword, they need to connect it. And so it's the threads inside. So all fences use lame suits in the same way that Elvis did.
52:08 Speaker 03 That suit of Elvis's is amazing.
52:11 Speaker 02 Did you see that in your?
52:12 Speaker 03 I can't remember if I saw it, because they've, they've got a pair of the blue suede shoes. You know, they've got, they've got, they've got a load of costumes and outfits. But that is, if you, if you're listening to this and you want to know what that gold lame suit is, it's on the front cover of an album, which gets referred to as 50 million Elvis fans can't be wrong, which is a very, very funny album title. Uh, and it's, it's this mad gold suit. It's very loose. It doesn't fit him at all well by a modern standard, but it's a, it's a, yeah. I think I might, I can't remember if I've, if I saw it there.
52:42 Speaker 05 In the night there was a lightning storm, wouldn't it?
52:44 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
52:45 Speaker 05 It'd be like absolute conduct, wouldn't you?
52:47 Speaker 03 Absolutely.
52:48 Speaker 02 I found a comedy play from 1805 called The Taylors, um, which was shown at Covent Garden. Uh, and it was kind of taking the piss out of young dandies at the time.
53:00 Speaker 05 Oh.
53:01 Speaker 02 Uh, and they were so annoyed with it that they all turned up and started booing the actors and stuff. And not only that, they decided to throw not rotten tomatoes, but scissors and cutting shears.
53:15 Speaker 03 Oh.
53:16 Speaker 02 At the actors throughout their opening night.
53:19 Speaker 05 Wow.
53:20 Speaker 03 Grizzly Adams is on stage doing the, doing the warm up. He has a terrible night.
53:26 Speaker 02 Isn't that mad?
53:27 Speaker 03 That's crazy.
53:28 Speaker 05 That is wild.
53:28 Speaker 02 That is, but, um, gosh.
53:30 Speaker 05 But how interesting to think of a group of people one associates with sort of foppishness and not being particularly, uh, agitated.
53:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, but young dandies is like, you know, mods rockers, that kind of.
53:40 Speaker 05 Yeah, isn't it? Yeah. I know it's an obvious thing to say, but one realises that the things we see today have all happened before. The kind of protests or those kind of groups of people being.
53:51 Speaker 03 Yeah.
53:52 Speaker 05 Or, you know, people being outrageous in their dress sense as a protest or as a, as an expression and.
53:57 Speaker 03 Yeah.
53:57 Speaker 05 Interesting.
53:58 Speaker 03 I've got a riddle for you guys.
53:59 Speaker 05 Oh, give it. Okay. Carol Spencer.
54:02 Speaker 03 Was a fashion designer. She spent 30 years working for the same client designing clothes, but her clothes have never been worn by a human.
54:12 Speaker 05 Little bit. Was that Velasse or something?
54:16 Speaker 03 It wasn't Velasse.
54:17 Speaker 05 Nice guess.
54:18 Speaker 03 A horse saddle. It wasn't a horse related. James would have got it.
54:21 Speaker 05 James would have liked it.
54:24 Speaker 04 I think I've got it. I know my hit rate with the tennis racket is not backing that up. I think it's a living Madame Tussauds waxwork and with the fashion changing of the person.
54:35 Speaker 05 Like Madonna.
54:35 Speaker 04 Yeah, exactly.
54:36 Speaker 05 Changes her fashion all the time.
54:37 Speaker 04 They keep the waxwork, but they don't, and they change the clothes.
54:40 Speaker 03 You're so close. You're so close. It's a model of a person, but it's not Madame Tussauds.
54:47 Speaker 05 Oh, is it the, it's not the, um, is it Lennon who's kept in the cabinet?
54:51 Speaker 03 It's not Lennon.
54:53 Speaker 04 Lennon's fashion show.
54:57 Speaker 04 Mr. February Revolution, it's Lennon again. The fashion show, when they're all wheeled out. Sherman Mal Summer, look.
55:08 Speaker 05 Is it the mannequin piece?
55:10 Speaker 04 It's not the mannequin piece. Right, shall I tell you all?
55:13 Speaker 05 Oh, go on. Oh, I feel like we are close.
55:14 Speaker 04 You're very close. Her client, I'll tell you this, one more please.
55:16 Speaker 05 Okay.
55:17 Speaker 03 Her client was only 11 and a half inches high.
55:20 Speaker 05 Oh.
55:22 Speaker 03 She's fashionable, she's got a lot of outfit changes.
55:24 Speaker 05 Bobby.
55:25 Speaker 04 It's Bobby.
55:28 Speaker 05 I knew we'd get there. I knew, sorry. You're very itching to tell us.
55:31 Speaker 04 No, no, no, no.
55:32 Speaker 05 Wants to play the game a bit longer.
55:35 Speaker 04 I'm so sorry for truncating it brutally like that.
55:38 Speaker 05 No, no, no, I'm sure.
55:39 Speaker 04 We've all got homes to go to.
55:41 Speaker 05 All the people listening were like, it's obviously Bobby. Is it Lennon?
55:52 Speaker 04 Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we have said over the course of this podcast, we can all be found online. I'm on Instagram on at Shreiberland. James?
56:04 Speaker 05 Uh, come find me on TikTok. No such thing as James Harkin.
56:07 Speaker 04 Andy?
56:07 Speaker 05 I'm Instagram at Andrew Hunter Ab.
56:09 Speaker 04 Tom, where can we find you?
56:11 Speaker 05 Um, my Instagram? Handle is at Tomindeed. So do feel free to follow me there. Or I have just started a visualized podcast. I don't know if you're familiar with this idea. And that is available from all podcast providers and also on YouTube at Tom Allen is the handle. And it's called Pottering and it's about gardening and being in the garden with my friends.
56:33 Speaker 04 Oh, great. So you're in the garden. You've got your guests sitting there. In the distance, we see a helmet just sort of wandering around.
56:41 Speaker 05 Yes, just don't talk, don't acknowledge him. He's got another six years left.
56:47 Speaker 04 Well, yeah, if you want to get to us as a group, go to podcast at qi.com. You can send us some facts. You can send us some extra things that you want us to know about that we were talking about. Whatever you send, Andy goes through these emails. He cherry picks the best of them and they make their way to our bonus show called Drop Us A Line. Now, this is part of a secret club called Club Fish, which you can find on Patreon. If you go to patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish, you can find all the details there. And you can also send us your most interesting facts because we have a bonus show that goes out on this main feed called Little Fish every Monday. And we will be reading out the best of your facts on that show. Otherwise, just come back here next week. We're going to be back again with another wonderful guest. We'll see you then. Goodbye.
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