Beef And Dairy Network - Episode 92 - Pam Onion

Episode Date: January 22, 2023

Beth Eyre and Dan Thomas join in this month as we hear about Pam Onion's most recent attempt to free her father, the beloved entertainer Sid Onion, from prison. Stock media provided by Setuniman/Pond5.com and Soundrangers/Pond5.comMusic credits courtesy of epidemicsound.com:No 19 in C Major KV 465 II Andante Cantabile / MozartSingle Malt Housewarming / Martin KlemPerplex Dilemmas / Miles AvidaHopeful / NebulaeIs This Circus Music / Luella Gren

The Beef and Dairy Network is sponsored by Granium, the famous nutritional sand from Mitchell's. If it's not Mitchell's, get back in the truck. Please disregard any rumors you may have heard about cattle consuming Granium and then only being able to walk backwards. It's definitely not true. And if it were, would that really be so terrible? For 10% off your next order of granium, simply walk backwards

and see that it's not so bad now, is it? Hello, and welcome to the Beef and Dairy Network podcast, the number one podcast for those involved or just interested in the production of beef animals and dairy herds. The Beef and Dairy Network podcast is the podcast companion to the Beef and Dairy Network website and a printed magazine brought to you by Grainium Nutritional Sand. And I would just like to reiterate what was said during our sponsorship spot at the beginning of the show from our sponsor, Grainium. If your cow is seen to walk backwards after consuming Grainium, that has nothing to do with what they have just consumed. And really, as an owner,

you should see it as a new feature that your cows now have. So actually, it's a positive, isn't it? That they are walking arse-first into a bright future. This month's episode is all about the well-loved British entertainer Sid Onion. Sid, of course, was one half of the British entertainment juggernaut double-act Cheese and Onion, a duo whose work abruptly came to an end in 2014 when Sid was arrested taking beef over the Turkish border and after a short trial he was imprisoned for an indeterminate amount of time. You may remember a previous episode of this podcast in which the charity Boeuf Sans Frontières were raising money to build up a

war chest that could be used for bribes to get Sid out of prison. However, due to some sort of error, the wrong Sid Onion was released. A serial killer responsible for what is thought to be over 200 deaths. Undeterred, Sid Onion's family, most notably his daughter Pam Onion, started a new effort to fundraise and a new effort to free him from the prison. And six months ago, that came to pass. You'll have no doubt heard the story and know what happened, but in this episode, we came to pass. You'll have no doubt heard the story and know what happened, but in this episode, we hope to get a greater understanding of what occurred. So later, I will speak to the released Sid Onion, but first, Sid's daughter Pam has offered us an

exclusive play of an excerpt of her new book in audiobook form, Pam Onion's Tears at the Chopping Board, a memoir by Pam Onion, and in this case, read by Pam Onion. It's also worth mentioning that this audiobook, Pam Onion's Tears at the Chopping Board A memoir by Pam Onion Read by me, Pam Onion Music Music Pam Onion.

When I made the appeal, we had no idea whether anyone would give money. We'd already wasted so much of the public's money in our first failed attempt to free Dad, that I didn't know whether people would have lost faith in us. After all, I felt such guilt that a convicted serial killer had been freed because of a mistake we made. You can only begin to imagine the relief I felt when he killed again and went back to prison. That was a huge load off my mind, and my conscience was clear again. Also, as time went by, I began to wonder whether the public would forget about Sid Onion. After all, Dad hasn't been on television since the ill-fated Channel 5 game show he did with Les Cheese,

Showish or Knob, where contestants had to identify the homes of celebrities from the house's doorknobs alone, all while Les exposed himself and manipulated his genitals to make crude skin puppetry caricatures of world leaders. While his port wine stain birthmark led to a really uncanny Gorbachev,

ultimately, the public deemed it too much for lunchtime and voted with their feet, hurling their shoes at ITV headquarters until it was cancelled in 1996 after only 12 series. Added to this, I always had the creeping suspicion that the public always loved Les' cheese more than they loved Dad. After all, it was usually Les singing the songs and doing the jokes, while Dad was largely being hit in the face with pies or pelted with boiling hot onions and pickling vinegar.

Palm Onion's Tears of the Chopping Board, a memoir by Palm Onion, read by Pam Onion, is sponsored by the McFintans Onion. It's one big onion. Why mess around with a bag of onions when you could buy one big onion? This single onion will last an average household six weeks. When you need onion, simply hack a chunk off. When you need onion, simply hack a chunk off. Pleasingly, it seemed that I had underestimated Dad's popularity because we reached our fundraising target in only six hours. After a week, we raised more than two million pounds.

We had to choose what to do with the extra money. I had thought that it might be a nice idea to donate the money to a charity to help the families of other people wrongly imprisoned abroad. But it was my brother Conrad who quite rightly made us think, what would dad do? And we came up with the idea that we should use the surplus to build a statue of my father's hero. The thing was, throughout his life, he has had two great heroes, and we had no idea how to choose between them. And so next year, on Dad's birthday, a 15-foot bronze statue of General Pinochet's head with Margaret Thatcher's body will be unveiled on Morecambe seafront. I want to extend my sincerest gratitude to everyone who contributed. Now we had the money, it was time to think strategy.

Our attempt to bribe officials had backfired last time, so that was off the table. In the previous months, the charity Bouffes Sans Frontieres, or Beavs Without Borders, had lobbied the UK government to apply political pressure to secure his release, and succeeded in setting up a meeting between the Prime Minister and the Turkish Justice Minister. Unfortunately, at the time, the Prime Minister was Boris Johnson, and the poor Turkish Justice Minister walked into the meeting room to find him hunched over, sweatily shagging a rolled-up carpet. Despite us sending them the money to buy one of the world's most powerful steam cleaners, we learned, in retaliation for the defilement of the rug by our elected Premier,

my father was moved into solitary confinement. We find many of our customers get solace from their giant McFintan's onion. Why not draw a face on it and share your innermost thoughts? Our next plan was to raise my father's profile in Turkey itself. If the local population could grow to love him as much as the British public, surely pressure will be put on the government to release him. We started by persuading a local TV channel to repeat the 1984 Cheese and Onions straight-to-VHS movie

Costa del Bollocks 2, Bollocks a Cock News. In this 90-minute caper, my father and Les Cheese play Alan and Nigel Bollocks are cock news. In this 90-minute caper, my father and Les Cheese play Alan and Nigel Bollocks, a pair of British newsreaders trying to make their fortune in Spain. So while the first Costa del Bollocks was watched by an audience of over 20 million on Christmas Day in 1983, for the sequel, Les and Dad decided to try and cash in, and lo and behold, in 1984, it became the biggest-selling VHS in British history, which would then be overtaken by 1986's Costa del Bollocks 3, jilted at Gibraltar. A little factoid about the Costa del Bollocks VHS releases,

according to a study by University College London, there are now so many piles of them in British charity shops that they have become structurally integral to many of the buildings, and if they were all to be bought at the same time, the whole of many major urban centres in the UK would collapse. That is only really a hypothetical reality. So if you fancy a mix of sunny Spanish scenery, cheeky harmless innuendo, along with quite hardcore sexual innuendo that would never have been allowed on broadcast television, featuring songs and cameos by well-loved ITV newsreaders of the 1980s,

why not pick up a copy? You'll love it. Although, I'll tell you who didn't love it. The Turkish public. Not because they found any aspect of it offensive they just thought it was shit remember when your onion isn't in use it makes a fascinating talking point for guests McFintans our big onion is your big onion.

Onion. Undeterred. Our next strategy involved trying to make the Turkish prison system so overcrowded that he would have to be released. To do this, we framed several thousand people for thousands of murders that were actually carried out by our diligent lawyer, John Wasabi. Sadly, Wasabi got into the role a bit too much and began leaving cryptic calling cards at the scene of every murder, which began getting less and less cryptic until he was just leaving his business card in the victim's mouth. The police had no trouble cracking this code, and he was arrested, found guilty, and sentenced to 4,000 goes on the electric chair. Fortunately for Wasabi, while the first shock stopped his heart, the second one started again, and so on and so forth, 4,000 times. Luckily,

the final shock was a reviving one, and although he's now very crispy-skinned, he lives to lawyer another day. I would heartily recommend him as a lawyer, unless you have a pacemaker, because now it's not just his personality that's magnetic, it's his spine. Regularly buying more than one onion? Get with the times, Grandad. McFintans, the big onion people. We next tried myriad other schemes involving keys up someone's bum, a telephone up someone's bum, a file in a cake, a file in a cake up someone's bum, serial podcast season five from This American Life, writing a polite email to the Pope, and writing a shirty email to the Pope.

Nothing was working. I began to truly believe that my father would never get out of prison. Then, on top of that, the Queen died. I watched the funeral, knowing that if Dad were free, Cheese and Onion would have done a turn in the cathedral. The official plans were that Cheese and Onion would burst out of the coffin and sing their hit song, Cheesy Does It, before the sermon. The injustice burned deep in my heart. I didn't get out of bed for six weeks,

watching the Queen's funeral on repeat and eating handful after handful of raw beef mince, what the Germans call Trauerfleisch, which translates as morning meat, weeping flesh, grief beef. But if I have learned one thing from Dad's life and career, it is that the brightest lights follow the darkest darks. I think of the time that him and Les were performing a song on television that suggested that the Duke of Edinburgh's penis looked like a courgette.

This led to weeks of tabloid scandal and repeated beatings by members of the armed forces, but ultimately led to their big-money advertising partnership with Sainsbury's. Your neighbours will be so jealous of your massive onion, they'll start to see you differently. They'll see you as someone with a huge onion. Another example is the time that Dad didn't realise how much alcohol was in a trifle and drove the wrong way up the M1 and broke 45 bones in a head-on collision with a coachload of Dutch badminton professionals.

It was a dark time, not only for Dad, but for Dutch badminton. But this event would lead him to meeting his ninth wife, Agnetha von Pim, who was responsible for giving out the therapy ponies at the convent where he recuperated. She would go on to be his faithful and loving wife for eight weeks. What's that in your kitchen? A big dried out alien egg? No, that's a McFintin's.

McFintin's. We know our onion. After six weeks of depression in bed, one morning, I got a call from our lawyer, John Wasabi. I knew it must have been important, because since the 4,000 electrical executions, Wasabi doesn't use the phone much these days. Something to do with the magnets inside the phone speaker and his magnetic spine mean that after a minute or two, thick blue bolts of

electricity fire out of his arse. In fact, he has to take calls standing on a church spire so that the electricity is correctly earthed. Over the sound of the howling wind and the infernal squeaking and creaking of a rusty weather vane, I could just about hear John telling me excitedly that an entertainer from Turkey, one half of Turkey's most beloved double act, Yogurt and Kofta, had been arrested in London for selling counterfeit eggs to a judge. Wasabi described it as the perfect opportunity for a prisoner swap. Finally, we were going to get Dad out.

Spill a bag of onions and you'll be picking them up for up to a minute. Finally, we were going to get Dad out. Spill a bag of onions and you'll be picking them up for up to a minute. With one big onion, you're done in seconds. Three days later, we were stood on the tarmac as the plane touched down at RAF Bryson Orton. We were going to see Dad again. The world's press were assembled. For some reason, Rita Ora was there, and the UK government had decided to celebrate the event by erecting a huge fiberglass onion,

which later blew into the path of a landing 747, leading to the biggest air disaster in British history. But for me, that was nothing compared to the disaster that unfolded as the doors of the government plane opened. A man, at least 30 years younger than my father, stepped off the plane. It had happened again. This time, due to an admin error on the part of our recently electrocuted lawyer, we had freed the wrong Sid Onion. A big thanks to Pam and Ian for that exclusive play of her audiobook. And if you'd like to buy the full memoir in hardback or listen to that full audiobook read by Pam and Ian with a foreword from Michael Palin,

go to the Beaufs en Frontier website. That's beaufsenfrontier.bif. Also, it's worth knowing that all the proceeds from the book and the audiobook are going into a fund. It's a legal fighting fund which will be used to prosecute people who graffiti on or deface the statue of General Pinochet slash Margaret Thatcher. So now it's time for another exclusive we are the only uk podcast to secure an interview with the syd onion who was released during this attempt to secure the release of the much-loved entertainer syd onion it turns out he's from swansea in south wales and his real name or rather his birth name is dean lamp uh hello my name is name is Dean Lamp, or aka Sid Onion.

All will become clear later. I started by asking Dean about how he ended up in Turkey. Well, what had happened was I was minding my own business one afternoon watching a film on Channel 5, and it was this thing, I forget what it was, I think Max von, one of the Maxes, von Sydow, one of them was in it, and he was nicking a

jeweled dagger from this museum in Turkey, Istanbul or Constantinople, I still call it, because I'm old-fashioned in that way. And I thought, I'll have that, because I've done a bit of career criminalling. Yeah, is it fair to say that you, you know, I don't want to cast aspersions, but

would you describe yourself as a career criminal? Well, I'm a davened. You know, career, I don't want to make it seem like I could do anything. I could do it, I don't want to cast aspersions, but would you describe yourself as a career criminal? Well, I'm a dab hand. You know, a career, I don't want to make it seem like... I could do anything. I could do it. I could be a doctor. This is what I'm doing at the moment. But I would say I'm a dab hand at criminally.

Right. And obviously you're based here in Swansea. What kind of criminal activity were you doing here before you ended up in Turkey? Scrumping, originally. That's stealing... Apples. Yeah. and playstations that it became i was originally scrumping for apples as a child and then you get in your 20s and you put childish things behind you and you start nicking hardware

yeah because is is it possible these days to make a living entirely just from stealing apples increasingly so actually with the cost of living thing, people do want a cheap apple. I see, okay. So you moved on to PlayStations. Anything bigger and better than that? PlayStation 5? Yeah, what I'm getting at is

it seems like a bit of a leap to go from, you know, stealing the old PlayStation 5 to then trying to get a bajillion dagger from a museum, you know what I mean? Well, you're not wrong there. I mean, I ended up in jail, you know. I got away with the PlayStation stuff for for years and then what i took too much of a leap you know sometimes when you apply for a job that you haven't really got the qualifications

for that's what happened yeah in my head i'm like i could totally burglarize a constantinople museum and as we now know no yeah okay so maybe you could have you should have sort of built up to it a bit. I mean, you're saying a lot of the thoughts that I've had in prison. You know, it's not like I was... I've been sitting in prison for years going, I probably should have gone PlayStation, PlayStation 5, some of the higher-end PCs, a car, the jewel dagger. The jewel dagger, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I know now, I mean, it's obvious. I'm sure to you now, now i mean it's obvious i'm sure to you now a journalist it's obvious to me a man who basically just stole apples you know and i could kick myself now so maybe like for example you know this is all very much after the lord mayor's parade but you could have done the gift shop at the museum first just to case like did he case the museum before you see i'm feeling silly now now you're saying all that i hadn't cased it and i wanted to case it because it's the sort of thing you feel cool doing i'm sure a case in somewhere you've seen people casing things in films having a whale of a time what it was was i got a plane out there and then i got a return flight it was cheaper if I came back that afternoon. If I'd thought ahead,

I'd be like, you know what? Spend the extra 20 quid come tomorrow. Spend today casing. Tomorrow robbing flying up. Yeah. But I was like, I'll get in for 11, back be three. So it really only gave you off the airport a bite to eat. I only had about 40 minutes to rob the museum.

And obviously you didn't have to pay for any accommodation that way either. That's the thing. I mean, the thing is, I thing is i might be a thief but i also love a bargain i mean a lot i mean basically a thief is someone who bloody loves a bargain i mean i want something for nothing but you can't nick him you can't nick a plane flight or a hotel room that's something you can't you know you can't put a plane down your trousers okay so tell me about you you arrive you've got 40 minutes on the clock before you could be back in departures. Yeah.

So you make your way to the museum. Just talk me through it. So I just basically, I didn't go through the gift shop. Maybe I should have done. I went through the air vents, which was stupid because it was broad daylight. And I had, the only way up is,

basically I'm climbing the museum, right? Which is daft because I don't climb. I'm climbing a museum, right? Which is daft, because I don't climb, really. But the museum was open, right? Yeah, but you can't... You could have just gone in the front door. Again, kicking myself. Or wait until the museum's closed. But I couldn't do that, because I had the flight.

Yeah, okay, yeah. Well, it's 15 quid to get in, right? You want to make that saving? Yeah, I want to make that saving. Also, I don't even know what money they've got in Turkey. So I hadn't changed anything. I'd have been, you know, handing over pictures of the Queen, God bless her soul.

So I, like I say, vent. So I go up there. I didn't have a ladder. Went through the vent. Turns out, you know what? They're smaller in real life than they are. Luckily, I had nicked, you know those little tubs of flora you get on a plane for your rolls. I had a bunch of them,

greased myself up, and in I went because it was about my size. Couldn't breathe, had an asthma attack, and if I'm honest with myself, let's be honest about male mental health, I had a panic attack in a vent in Turkey. Probably a hotter vent than you get in Britain.

It was hot. It wasn't. God, I tell you what, I don't know what I was vent it was hot it wasn't yeah god i tell you what i don't know what i was venting but it wasn't cool air good god anyway so i'm greased up which makes you warmer anyway in i go i finally get there and i can there's a sort of a grating thing with um i could see lasers and stuff which is protecting the um the museum bits and and i couldn't see the dagger couldn't see the dagger. Couldn't see the dagger. So they're like, right, well, I'm going to have to get down there and have a proper look around.

At which point, I just fell through the ceiling. The ceiling underneath Dean gave way and he crashed into one of the galleries, landing on a security guard. It's fair to say this wasn't part of the plan. Despite falling into the main gallery of the museum, the bejeweled dagger was nowhere to be seen. So, just to recap, you haven't yet found the Bejeweled Dagger?

Oh, there isn't one. There isn't one, as it turns out. It was for the film as a prop. I'd have been better off going to a toy shop to get what I was after. Long story short, they don't have a dagger. It was just for a film 50 years ago. Right, I see. So what I'm not quite understanding is you obviously ended up in prison. What crime had been committed? When the security guard did come to ask what was going on, I just hit him in the face with a fire extinguisher, which is in Turkey illegal.

Yeah, that's illegal in most jurisdictions, I think. Again, I haven't looked into it. So was that the main charge then, the battery or the assault, what you'd call it? That was the one they really held against me. That's the one I could tell, look on his face, he's going to hold this against me. I assume then that the security guards called the Turkish police.

Mm-hmm, yeah, yeah. What was your interactions with them like? Short. Short. Those boys know what they're yeah. What was your interactions with them like? Short. Short. Those boys know what they're doing. They love a headlock. And I love a headlock, but on the other side of it, I'll be honest, but on this occasion,

I was the one in the headlock, and it was absolutely dreadful. Talk me through the court case. Well, I mean, I can't, because I don't speak the language. Right. So, I mean, I could tell from the way they were looking at me it wasn't going my way.

And then when I ended up in prison for four years, I was like, I reckon I lost that one. More after this. So my personal goal is to eat a little bit more beef in 2023. I ate quite a lot in 2022, but with the help of others, I think I can do more this year. And to do this, I'm going to need help from a personal butcher, a PA to sort out the kind of admin side of things, and also a therapist. It's hard to find people who are so good at what they do. It's like when you're hiring, how can you find the best

people for the different roles on your team? ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter's matching technology finds the right candidates for your job, and then you can invite them to apply. In fact, four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Go to ziprecruiter.com slash beef to try ZipRecruiter for free. That's ziprecruiter.com slash B-E-E-F. Dean was sentenced and sent to a high-security prison on the outskirts of Istanbul. It was quite a lonely experience. I made friends with a mouse. Shy, intimidating. With a mouse. I ate him in the end. Then, after six months, Dean was moved to a new prison, the same prison that housed Sid Onion.

In fact, he was living there back in 2017, when the first wrong Sid Onion was released. And basically, the main thing was like, how were there two people in a Turkish prison called Sid Onion? Before this, I had never heard the word. It's not like his name was Derek Jones. He's called Sidonian. I haven't been in the same town with two Sidonians. And now we are in a Turkish prison population. There was only 23 people in there. Two of them were called Sidonian. So it wasn't lost on you what an extraordinary

kind of coincidence that was by the sounds of things yeah it was mad yeah okay and and obviously you're now called sid onion legally speaking legally speaking called sid onion yeah yeah and you yourself were freed in a very similar admin error um how did that come to pass because you weren't just to be clear you weren't christened sid onion no no no no no i wasn't christened Sid Onion no no no no no I wasn't christened basically what happened was we were like right we got one Sid Onion he's gone we've got one Sid Onion left to play with there and somebody had the idea right that I they if we were all called Sid Onion by the time they sorted out, they could be, they could, basically, they could pull up a van,

pile in 24 Sid Onions, drive it to Britain and say, yeah, take a lot. Right. So you were hoping that maybe a similar attempt would happen, and lo and behold, as it did happen. Yeah. So you all changed your name to Sid Onions. We all changed our name to Sid Onions. That was the main thing. Basically, the things being smuggled into the prison that month were fags, whiskey, and deed pool forms. And we were all filling it in.

What do you want to change the name to? Sid Onion's reason for name change. And then we, you know, that winky sort of smiley face emoji, we would just draw that in. So the thinking was, you know, hopefully this happens again. Lo and behold, there was a kind of administrative error. There was meant to be a prisoner swap in which a turkish

entertainer would be sent back to turkey and sid onion would be sent back to britain instead you came back tell me about how you found out that you were going to leave and and why didn't i mean it's obvious why in a way why didn't you say hang on i'm i'm not the sid onion you're after i mean i guess the answer to that is obvious yeah yeah yeah um, yeah. I mean, it's not that I found out. Basically, we were all in the yard playing Twister. And basically, the warden come out and he just said,

which one of you is Sid Onion? And everyone put their hand up and he went, I love you. He just went, fucking you. He's probably right. I mean, fucking you. And I said, alright, I'll be Sid Onion. What do you want? And he just bundled me into a van. I would have assumed that there'd be something like I'd end up, you know, speaking to like the diplomatic service or the embassy, something like that.

No, they bundled me into a van. 18 hours later, they opened the van up. It turns out it was a plane. All right. I just, you know, it was dark. It was a van or a plane. It definitely must have been a plane because i was an air force base called bryce norton right okay so just to be clear when

you were bundled into this vehicle in turkey yeah you thought you were being bundled into a van which is quite quite common yeah but in fact you're being bundled into a plane that's not common to be bundled into a bit of a. Yeah. And did they stamp your passport or anything during the bundling? Or was it just a classic bundling? Oh, it was a classic bundling. I've been bundled before. I don't know if you've been bundled a lot,

but I've had my fair share. And this was a boom, straight... I would give it a 9 out of 10 bundle, this one. They just... Arms behind my back, head down, kicking a knackers, classic in the quote-unquote van play. As you are being bundled, and obviously it's hard to do anything

while you're being bundled. We've both been bundled. I've been bundled, you've been bundled. I can do a sudoku while I get bundled. Now, that's the experience, eh? Yeah, well, I've been bundled maybe once or twice. How many times do you think you've been bundled? Dozens.

Dozens. And if I've got a pen and paper, I'll sudoku. While you were been bundled? Dozens. Dozens. And if I've got a pen and paper, I'll Sudoku. While you were being bundled, were you able to look back at the other inmates? And what I'm interested in, really, is what the real, original Sidonian was looking like. Because the way you describe it, a man comes out and says,

oh, you'll do. I assume the actual Sidonian was saying, hang on, I'm Sidonian. I'm the actual Sidonian. Well, that's the trouble. Everyone was saying, I'm the actual Sidonian with. I'm the actual Sid Onion. Well, that's the trouble. Everyone was saying I'm the actual Sid Onion with various accents. Right. His was obviously closer because he was him.

Yeah. He sounded almost exactly like him. Yeah. But the bloke didn't care. I think, basically, the warden was just pointing at who's the nearest

Sid Onion to the van door. And it was me. Yeah. Because that's where I used to hang out. No. I won't say what I was doing there. But you said you were playing Twister.

Yeah. Yeah, but all right. Listen, this is another crime. I was basically running a book on Twister in a Turkish prison. So, yeah, basically, that's what was that. I was the Ladbrokes of prison. I see. Turkish Twister.

Right. And your little station there where you'd take the bets. By the door, door yeah so did you feel any guilt then knowing that the real sydneyan and obviously you know all of the work that had gone into his release was done by his family and not yours your family as far as i'm aware didn't make any attempt to get you you know i didn't find out till later that um on my way to Turkey on that plane, they'd shot me in anyway. Oh, they tipped off the... Yeah. Right.

They were like, check your vents. Right. I mean, it didn't help in the end because I fell through. But if I'd been there another four or five minutes, they'd have been like, all right. I'd be like, all right. How do you know I was here? Like, your mum told us.

Oh, your mum? Your mother did that? Yeah. Right. So, you know, there's a big difference there, really. We think about Sid Onion's family. Pam Onion, his daughter, you know, years now, spent campaigning to get him out of prison.

And then you obviously turn up. Do you feel any guilt about that? So as I was being bundled, they put my head right down between my legs as I was being carted away. And I could look, I was upside down, but I could see the real Cydonian, and he looked

really sad, genuinely sad. And for a moment, I nearly felt sad for him. But, bear in mind where my head was, I was more distracted by the smell of my own groin, which was horrible. Okay, and then obviously you arrive in Britain, the doors open on the plane, you're in RAF Bryson Horton.

And in front of you, and I've seen the footage, is the family of the real Sid Onion. There's the world's press, there's dignitaries, government officials. It's a bit of a circus, right? You come out, there's a hushed silence, and they very quickly realise, we've done it again. We've got the wrong Sidonian. How is that from your perspective?

I figured out pretty quick what had happened there. Which made sense, because I knew there was a Sidonian. The odds are, these people are here for the actual man called Sidonian. And I thought, well, it might be a while since I've seen him. I'll try and style it out. Right. But can I just butt in here?

What I don't understand is, what was your long game here? Was the long game that you realize that it's the original Sidonian's family, and you think, if I can convince them that I am Sidonian, I can just slip into their life, and I can start living as him, and sort of cuckoo his family. Is that what you were trying to do? I hadn't thought... You thought about it a lot more than I have, I'll tell you.

I suppose, had it worked, I would have probably attempted to make small talk in the car on the way back to the house. And then I probably would have gone to the house and said something like, assuming that I haven't given myself away in the car. Yeah. If I had just gone, I'll tell you what, I've got to be on my own for a bit because I've got to get my old accent back, for one thing. Right, of course, because the accent, yes. The accent's completely off. Were you going to try and pass this off

as like a sort of Turkish accent? Yeah, I was going to try and tell them, you know what, this is what happens if you get five, six years of English accent, Turkish accent, it comes out as, broadly speaking, neef. So I was going to try that for a bit, and then I was going to probably sell the house and fuck off.

Sell the house from under them? Well, from under everyone, including me. Yeah. I'd go just, you know, make big money and go stay in a premier inn. For the rest of your life? Yeah. Because that's the dream for you? Have you been in a Turkish prison?

Premier inn is, I would say, better. Okay. But there is a kind of element of Turkish prison about a Premier Inn. Is that what you're looking for? Did you feel a certain amount of comfort in the prison? This is interesting, isn't it? Did the institution of the prison give you the kind of structure that you've been needing all your life?

But you're asking if life in a Turkish prison prepared me for life in a Premier Inn? Yeah, that's kind of what I'm getting at, yeah. Yeah. Pam Onion and the rest of the Onion family immediately knew that Dean wasn't the real Sid Onion, and so he wasn't able to carry out his planned deceit. Despite him swearing blind that he was Sid Onion,

they left him at the airfield, and he had to walk home to Swansea. So let's talk about your future. Your relationship with your family isn't the best, what I'm getting. Obviously, you said your mother called the turkish police to to apprehend you um so that's obviously not a great relationship who are you living with now i'm in your family home um your wife didn't look very pleased i was here i don't know if you told her i was coming was she pleased that you were back after all this time um she had made her own life i'll

be honest with you she had um i mean she'd married again oh it was a kind of tom hanks castaway situation um no it was within again she texted me on the plane that she was doing it so it's fairly quick um i i think uh she's gutted, I would say, and the kids are gutted that I'm back. I'm gutted I'm back. Oh, you're gutted you're back? Yeah. So what, are you left feeling

that you'd rather be back in Turkey now? How long have I been out now? How long have I been back in Wales? Six months? Yeah. Do you live here? No, I don't live here, no. You stay here six months, right?

Then spend an hour in a Turkish prison. And you tell me what you prefer. And since I can't necessarily afford my premier in-dream, I'll have what's second best. Right? You haven't got to pay for a TV license in a Turkish prison. Right. That's one cost.

Gas. My kids aren't there. My wife's not there. My wife's new husband's not there. You see why I'm building up a picture of a better place to hang out? Yes. So just to be clear clear you're living in this house with your wife who's remarried so she's got two husbands now no she wouldn't call it that she would say she's got keith and i'm not keith right i'm dean so she's she's no longer Mrs. Lamp? No. No, no. She's Mrs. Keith.

I don't fucking know this first. Prick. Did you get on with Keith? Yeah, he's alright. A big thanks to Dean Lamp slash Sid Onion for that interview. And any of you listening to that and rooting for him will be pleased to know that

last week he got on a plane to Istanbul and ran over a Turkish policeman in a rented Hyundai i10. He was then arrested, tried, and he's back just where he wanted to be, in Turkish prison. So that's all we've got time for this month. But if you're after more beef and dairy news, get over to our website now where you'll find all the usual stuff, as well as our off-topic section, where this month we push a heron to its emotional limits and see where it takes us.

And let me just say, it's a real journey of discovery. So, until next time, beef out. I missed it so much, but I had no idea where to start. I felt so overwhelmed. But thanks to your show, now I'm back to enjoying books again and feeling like a reader. Love, Sarah. Yeah, that's an email we actually answered. Okay, maybe not that email specifically, but one just like it because most of our listeners are named Sarah. We're Reading Glasses, and we're here to solve all your reader problems. We give advice, help you find books you love, and discuss reading without making you feel pressured. No matter what you read or how you read it, we'll help you do it better.

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