Loremen Podcast - S3 Ep32: Loremen S3 Ep32 - The Ghosts of Clopton House

Episode Date: August 6, 2020

It's only the most haunted house in the bloomin' Midlands!  James tells us about Stratford-upon-Avon's star-crossed Clopton Family, who met some truly tragic fates - in one case a LITERALLY sticky end. But their untimely deaths may have inspired Shakespeare and Edgar Allen Poe. So that's... good? Maybe? We also reveal which historic building Alasdair has been kicked out of and (as a post-credits bonus) James has prepared some Shakespeare puns. Niche? Us? Yes, very! Loreboys nether say die! ko-fi.com/loremen @loremenpod www.twitch.tv/loremenpod www.instagram.com/loremenpod www.facebook.com/loremenpod @JamesShakeshaft | @MisterABK

Welcome to Lawmen, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from days of yore. I'm James Shakeshaft. And I'm Alistair Beckett-King. And Alistair, this week's story is all about a haunted house. Not just any haunted house, the any haunted house the most haunted house in the midlands the most haunted house in the midlands yeah there's an important yes wow watch out for the ghosts three two one that's a very weak clap from me, but it did happen. I'm having to click fingers because of my wrist injury,

so I can't get my right hand involved in the clap at all. Oh, no. What's the sound of one hand clapping? It's clicking, mate. Yeah, there you go. There it is. Because either we accept that one hand can't clap, and so the question's wrong.

There's a lot of philosophical questions, a lot of sayings that depend on you not really thinking about the words. Like Heraclitus said, no man ever steps in the same river twice. Of course you can. You can step in the same river twice. Yeah, don't want to.

Nobody understands river to mean just the current water that's in that river now. No. That's not what a river is. No, otherwise the name would be changing all the time. I mean, in his defence, he clearly didn't write that. He wrote something in ancient Greek which has been mistranslated. Yeah.

But I think my point stands. Maybe it's that you wouldn't want to stand in a river twice because you'd get your sandals all wet. Yeah, you'd learn your lesson, wouldn't you? It's kind of a fool me once, shame on you thing, but said to a river. Yeah. All I'm saying is a lot of sayings don't hold up to scrutiny.

I agree. Having your cake and eating it. That's what you do with cake. That's standard cake procedure. Yep. What you want is to have your cake and eat it, but then also have some more cake. Yeah, like eat your cake and still have it. There's a saying that works.

You want to eat your cake and still have it. Why don't we say that? Don't know. The exception that proves the rule. Well, you mean the exception that proves that the rule is true except for certain exceptions that doesn't yeah what does that mean it's just a good way of saying yeah but the rule's still good isn't it a good way of saying i'm ignoring that yeah it's because it's an archaic sense of the word prove meaning tests but we've ignored that i mean i've got a confession here i used to think it was grasp the metal. Rather than grasp the nettle.

Yeah. And when sort of pressed on it, it was, what's so bad about grasping metal? As I said, it might be hot. Not spiky. You could have gone with spiky. Or sharp. Or sharp, yes. Yeah.

Nettles are a known quantity. Metal could be molten. There's so many reasons not to grasp a metal. It could be flaming lithium. But grasping a nettle is meant to mean that you don't get stung. Oh, yeah. Whereas grasping metal, if it's sharp, that makes it really worse. Yeah, no, you're right.

You've inverted the meaning of it. Anyway, I have a tale for you, Alistair. Oh, marvellous. I've got kind of a little bunch of ghostly tales. Ghosts? Get in. Yeah. I think I've found my haunted house that I've been searching for. A good haunted house tale and I think I've got it.

Brilliant. We're going to be talking about Clopton House in Stratford-upon-Avon. The name does not inspire confidence. Clopton. Is that right? C-L-O-P. Clopton. Yeah, Clopton. Clopton House. Like Plopton but with a cl at the start. Yes, yes. I was visualising a spooky haunted house,

and now I'm visualising a carry-on movie haunted house. Yes, Clopton House. Not I Hear You Cry. Is that Clopton Manor in Northamptonshire? No, Alistair. It's not Clopton Manor in Northamptonshire. Is it not? What, you mean the ancestral home of the ghost Skull King Dudley?

No, it's not. Clopton Manor, the ancestral home of the ghost Skulking Dudley, who I found out about and I just got to share a little, just a side. I'm starting with an aside. It's risky, but you know, you're a maverick. I'm going to go with you. It's the Skulking Dudley tangent. Come on.

So there's a couple of versions of the tale of Skulking Dudley. In one version, he dodges in and out of hedgerows near a ruined church and graveyard, and he's unable to rest because of a murder he committed in 1349. And these hauntings kind of seem to reach their peak in the early 1900s. And in 1905, the Bishop of Peterborough brought 21 clergymen over to lay him,

and seemingly successfully did. That's fantastic, because, I mean, I remember us considering 12 parsons to be too many parsons. Yes. But 21, I mean, you've inverted those figures. Exactly. To produce significantly more. The other story about Skull King Dudley was that he was a landowner from the 15th century, so about 100 years later, and he was so rude that his neighbour challenged him to a duel.

And Dudley was so cowardly that on the day of the duel, he pretended he was ill. His daughter disguised herself as him and went out to fight the duel. And she lost. She lost the duel? Yep, she lost the duel. So she died? Well, she was led on the floor,

and as the neighbour was about to run her through, she lifted up her mask, and he realised who it was. And, listener, he married her. Aww. Ah. Yeah, no, no, I thought that was romantic for a second, because of the way you said it. Yeah.

But that version of the Skulking Dudley tale is... I'm not clear on how that leads the man who was pretending to be able to become a ghost well one of his harvesters scythed his head off the harvester i guess is a person and not a vehicle or a pub yeah but that is probably a misremembering of another member of the dudley family agnes hot hot who yes what kind of reputation did she have she was hot to ot what happened to her was she took her father's place in a duel and she won oh and i've got a quote here when he lay prostrate on the ground she loosened her throat latch lifted up the visor of her helmet and let down her hair about her shoulders thus discovering her sex so you can

kind of see that in a sort of Disney princess manner. She takes the helmet off and shakes her hair. Yeah, I think a similar scene occurs in the arthouse movie Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. I think Maid Marian does that. Do you not mean the arthouse TV series Maid Marian and Her Merry Men? Maybe I was thinking of that. That's not the Clopton House I'm talking about. Did she marry that one?

Did they get married? did they hit it off because robin and marion did and when she shook her hair out discovering her sex no i think she's been a huge surprise for her yeah she just discovered her sex what an awkward situation to be in that's it that's where this that's where the tale ends discovering in that sense obviously means revealing, like when the exception proves the rule. No, it's not that Clopton Manor. It's Clopton House in Stratford-upon-Avon. Stop distracting me. Sorry, James. Considered by some to be the most haunted house in the Midlands.

Sorry for laughing disparagingly at that claim. Hey, somewhere's got to be. Now, this is in the north of Stratford-upon-Avon, and some of the stories involved in this place are believed to have inspired a little known guy from Stratford-upon-Avon called old... I see where it's going. Old Billy Shakespeare. Billy Shakes?

Oh, yeah. Have I ever told you that I was thrown out of the Shakespeare's Birthplace Museum? No. For being historically inaccurate. They thought you were a ghost they're like those clothes aren't realistic get him out of here i was filming an incredibly badly organized corporate video for shakespeare with a guy dressed in a very historically inaccurate shakespeare outfit like a bright purple shakespeare outfit with one of those sort of weird berets with

a tassel what and like normal people weren't even allowed to wear purple in Shakespeare's era, I think. It was only royals who could wear purple. So it's like the only colour he couldn't have been wearing. And it was an absolute nightmare. The guy who thought he'd arranged it, after we started filming, it was revealed that he had not actually arranged anything. Oh. And we were thrown out.

We were summarily marched out of the Shakespeare's Birthplace Museum. But the nice thing about that is when they kick you out, it was still via the gift shop because there's literally no other way to leave the museum. So we still got a chance to be whisked past an eraser and one of those spinny rulers, but with a picture of Shakespeare on it. And annoyingly, they were selling plush Shakespeare dolls wearing the exact same purple outfit that our guy was wearing.

Oh, really? Oh. So it's like, look to yourself. Yeah. Come on. Physician heal thyself. There must be a good Shakespeare non-Bible quote about that. Shakespeare museum. Shakespeare history house worker.

Shakespeare history yourself. Yeah. History pedant thyself. Mm. Mm. So, Stratford-upon-avon home of billy shakes and the the perfume company avon yes yes i think they started out selling copies of the complete works of shakespeare what door-to-door yeah they were door-to-door shakespeare sales i don't know if this is true they were door-to-door shakespeare sales people And because it was the past, they were usually selling to women. And they realised we could include samples of things women like, perfume and so on. As opposed to manly stuff like Shakespeare.

But no, because if it was guys, it would have been just selling, I don't know, beef or coits. What are men like? I don't know. Yes, it's coits. Yes. And they just realised that people like perfume loads more than they like Shakespeare. You can buy the complete works of Shakespeare basically once in your life, unless you lose it.

Whereas you can buy perfume on a regular basis. Do they still have to sell a ceremonial copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare once a year or something because of some clause? I would hope so. And you would hate to be the Avon worker who had to try and shift. Oh yeah, so every year a new Avon worker is cursed. Like Hunger Games. They get drawn out of the hat

and they have to be the one to sell the first folio. Yeah, and it won't even be Shakespeare's good plays. It'll be the ones nobody likes. Oh, the ones that aren't really written by him. Yeah. Like the bloke from Yorkshire one. There's one, I can't remember what it's called, but it's about a guy from Yorkshire. If it's called the bloke from yorkshire i can already hear that

shakespeare didn't write that that's not really his no he's idiot certainly not and this haunted house did not inspire midsummer night's dream unfortunately now there's some lesser ghosts the main lesser ghost uh i'm gonna bring it bring us into the spookiness with, was a priest who was murdered in a secret chapel and he's meant to haunt the upper rooms. He's been seen on the stairs and in the corridor and there are apparently some uncleanable bloodstains. And apparently now this house has been turned into flats and I don't know if there is still uncleanable bloodstains.

I mean, I've seen a lot of flats with uncleanable stains, so it's very likely. Probably also a light switch that nobody knows what it's for. Yes. And just a permanently locked door that the landlord says not to worry about, but you do worry about. That you can hear whirring behind. Yeah. Try and see through the keyhole.

There's an eye looking back back is that another priest's hole situation yeah yeah exactly the main three ghosts are three sisters oh no wait a minute they're not sisters they lived over 100 years apart oh i was gonna say three sisters is very shakespearean yeah no they're not sisters at all they're just three women from the same family they've all got the same surname which is why i presume them to be sisters but thinking about it some of the events took place over 100 years between so first one there's on the grounds there's maggie's well which is the location where margaret she was told by her father she couldn't marry the person she wanted because he was poor and she locked herself in her or she was locked in her room and she pined away and pined away and then one night she she let herself out and went to the well and drowned herself oh yes come on dads when will you

learn i don't know not not at that point yeah and then there's not that much about the actual ghost just that they are meant to haunt the upper floors the stories are all in how they met their unfortunate ends another one of the the female cloptums alice now she'd fallen in love with someone who was suitable this is kind of a nice sort of a bizarro world version of that first tale because she's fallen in love with someone suitable but an unsuitable suitor fell in love with her and the night before the wedding he kidnapped her and put her on his horse and galloped off to birmingham oh and as he was galloping along he was being followed by her her actual fiancee and some other fellas on horses and he could hear the horses were gaining on him

and his horse was starting to tire from carrying two people so he threw alice off off a bridge into a river what and raced off presumably to birmingham he's really compounded the error there he's and he's not kidnapping is bad yes bridge throwing exactly no way so it's showing that there is like you know if you start off shoplifting when you're a kid you will end up doing bigger crimes when you're a grown-up yep clearly kidnapping is a gateway drug to murder yeah because she died oh yeah the husband dived in the river but he was too late and he was so distraught he vowed to become a hermit and he lived in a cave that overlooked the river seven and he lived there for years and years and years he became thought to be a white one of the wise

ones and one day he had a visitor a man that he recognized it was the man that had murdered his fiancee so he jumped on him did the murderer know that the wise one was the guy he had wronged i don't know it doesn't say why the murderer was there or whether he knew maybe he was looking for a baddie's lair yeah in cave or something. He was scoping out property. It's in the market for caves. Because he'd become a supervillain. And the suitable suitor dived on him and they rolled about fighting and fell off the cliff

and were dashed on the rocks. Ooh. Yeah. This one's a horrible story. They're all pretty horrible. I don't want to be too sceptical about that, but the kidnapper there, he was riding a horse. Yeah. So just on the back, like

on a saddle. Yeah. And she's on there with him. Yeah. I think you need quite a lot of upper body strength to be able to literally throw someone off a bridge from that position who was also on the horse you were in. Not without stopping. Like, you'd have to be able to throw an entire person with one hand, wouldn't you? Because you'd have to keep hold of a horse with the other hand.

But horses are quite high, so maybe you just sort of shoved her off the horse and it happened to be while they were going over a bridge so she right okay sort of fell in the river by accident all right i'll buy it yeah yeah and now the third tale about one of the women from the from the clopton line unfortunately this one does pass the Bechdel test. Finally. Yeah. So we're back in either 1546 or 1564. I don't know which one's the typo, to be honest, but one clearly is. And the

plague came to town. Came to town is far too jolly a phrase. It is, isn't it? Yeah, the plague descended, the plague... Like the circus comes to town. It painted the town red. Brought back by Lord Leicester, who is returning from battle in the Low Countries. Lord Leicester.

Yeah. And the daughter of the Clopton family, Charlotte, she succumbed to the plague. She was hastily buried in the Clopton tomb at the Holy Trinity Church nearby. And then two weeks later, another member of the Clopton family died, presumably of the plague. And they went to the tomb another member of the Clopton family died, presumably of the plague.

And they went to the tomb and they opened the door. And Charlotte's body was leaning against the doorframe. Ah, what? Yeah. So she wasn't dead? She wasn't dead. She'd had the plague and she'd fallen quite ill. And because they were so afeard of the plague, they took her off and buried her when she wasn't really dead oh yeah and her hands were all

scratched and bloody and there were scratches in the door and some say that there was a bite out of her arm what kind of bite like she'd eaten her own arm presumably she bit in her own arm i don't think they would have been able to do those sort of dental tests yeah but yeah and her ghost is also meant to haunt the house well yeah you would absolutely i'd be furious furious yes talk about unfinished business what an unlucky family yeah and in around 1605 they rented the house out to a fella called Rokewood, who was one of the conspirators in the gunpowder plot. Oh, yeah. He was the person who supplied the horses,

because he was a horse breeder. He was kind of like the getaway man. Or the mechanic. Yeah, he'd have like a little rolled up cigarette behind his ear. Like some glasses that he pulls down when he needs to do stuff. And he'd be rubbing his hands clean on a rag. This would be his last job, though. Oh, yeah, yeah, no, he's retired.

Absolutely. And his wife's saying, like, you're not going out there taking risks. You've got to think about your heart or something like that. I know my own heart. If I don't do this, where is my heart? Is it Al Pacino playing him?

All that, but with horses. Yeah. So instead of tinkering around, he's just sort of breeding fast horses. So he's got like a rolled up turkey baster behind his ear. Is that a bit much? A bit much, yeah. Trying to not work out how that's involved in horse breeding. Yeah, don't.

Not an expert, and now really don't want to become one. I assume it's for eye drops, because they've got such big eyes. You don't want to get that i assume it's for eye drops because they've got such big eyes you don't want to get that in your eye you ready to score me i'd love to score you oh good should we begin yeah let's do it what's your first category naming naming yes all right you've got clopton house which is frankly worse than it not having a name that's a terrible name sounds rubbish and i've got clopton manor as well, in a way. And Clopton Manor. They all sound terrible. Every single person's name has been Clopton, apart from a guy whose name was Dudley.

Skulking Dudley. Skulking Dudley is good. Yeah, no, the nickname Skulking really lifts it. It does sound like one of those ailments from the Quacks of London episode. Yeah, like the Hogger Groccles and the Skulking Dudleys. Yeah, he's got a terrible case of the Skulking Dudleys in one leg. I mean, it almost implies parts of your body getting up and going off and doing things while you're not there. Yes, very furtively when they would need to.

We've got Agnes Hot Hot. I forgot about Agnes Hot Hot. Who was Agnes Hot Hot again? Agnes Hot Hot was the... She married into the Dudley family. Yes. It's H-O-T-O-T. It's still funny. Not Hot Hot.

It's Hot Hot. But I can't not pronounce it as Hot Hot. Hot Hot. Hot Hot and Hot Hot. It sounds the same. Hot Hot. Hot Hot. Hot Hot.

Hot Hot. Hot Hot. I bet it's probably not. It's pronounced Hoot Hoot. Like Hot Ho. It could be Hot Ho. Oh, Hot Ho. I think it's a three

purely for hot-hot. Whoa, Skull King Dudley? I'm not even scoring Skull King Dudley. I'm only interested in hot-hot. Oh, where's he been? Coming in here like Skull King Dudley. Just how some of the ways

that you could use those words. No, it's a three. I've rendered my verdict and it's a three. I will not be shifted on Skull King Dudley not being that good a name. Okay. Supernatural.

So every one of these people you've mentioned is a ghost now, right? Yes. Apart from the gunpowder plot guy. He's not a ghost. If he is a ghost, he doesn't haunt... There's not enough room for him, basically, at Clopton House. Apart from being seen on the stairs, what do the ghosts do? They'd be seen in a corridor.

Oh, okay. is that adjacent to the stairs yeah it might just be it might stare adjacent to be honest that might be the same event i don't know there's not it just says that they sort of go around the upper rooms why not the ground floor why do they just go the upper rooms uh posh all right yeah fair enough yeah they probably don't remember being in the servant quarters there's's a hidden chapel up there, probably something to do with that. Oh, the hidden chapel is on the first floor of the building. Yeah, it's up in the attic, I think. Oh, right.

First floor, for American listeners, is what we call, what you call, the second floor. I can't explain why. Because the ground floor, that's on the ground. It's on the ground. Yeah. Self-explanatory. Arguably, it is also the first floor. Yes, yeah.

And the upstairs should be ground floor junior. And then ground floor the third. Yes. Yeah, just do it like that. Yeah. A girl in the 1820s from Stratford-upon-Avon, she wrote of the pent-up atmosphere and eerie feeling in one of the bedrooms. A general feeling of...

A weird atmosphere, weird vibe. A bit of a weird vibe. Yeah. And being seen on the stairs. And the corridor. Look, I don't... These are all great stories, and the deaths are spectacular and exciting,

grotesque, terrifying, but as supernatural goes, we've just got someone who doesn't like the decor of a bedroom, ghosts that have been seen on the stairs, all the upper rooms. It's not very substantial, is it? Sir Arthur Hodgson, who was one of the later owners of the house, he refuted the idea that there were any ghosts,

but he did say that he once put a guest to sleep in the priest's chamber, the secret church, and the guest departed hurriedly the next morning, declaring nothing would induce him to remain another night in the house. That's from Ghosts of Warwickshire by Betty Smith. I mean, a lot of things could have happened that night. Yeah. Maybe they didn't put on the heated blanket in time. Maybe it was just bad banter over brandy.

My uncle once complained to my mum that her duvet was too loud. Like rustling? Yeah. Is that the problem? I mean, come on. Yeah, that's too much. he did what you know if you've ever i've not done this myself but i've heard of people doing this sometimes you might be staying in a hotel when you've gone on a big night out maybe to a wedding and you've you've maybe soiled the room in some way so you sort of leave in a leave in a hurry

just befouled the place and then leave going like, oh, it was ghosts. Yeah, think there was some ghosts. Too many ghosts, sorry. Think some ghosts did a poo in your bed. Bye. I think a ghost sneaked a takeaway back in. Expressly against the rules of this B&B. I don't know what that ghost has done to that toilet.

Very haunted. So. It's a two. Two. I think it is a two out of five. It's a two out of five because pooing in a hotel room, not a ghost. You're saying that pooing in a hotel room is natural. Yes, that's what I'm saying.

Okay, then. I think it can be explained by science, although scientists have been reluctant to investigate it thus far. Okay, fair enough. I'm shocked. Look, it's the most haunted house in the midlands in the midlands i'm as surprised as you are that there are no good actual encounters with the ghost okay then category the third bad luck oh yeah what bad luck oh bad luck mate you do a

duel for your dad and you nearly get killed oh Oh, no way, then they got married. That's actually quite good luck. It depends. Or is it? Yeah, you're marrying a neon jeweller. Jeweller. Jewellist. Yeah, marrying a jeweller is probably quite a wise decision.

Marrying a jeweller. You don't want that. You'd accidentally drop a glove on him. You've got another duel going. Yeah. And you really can't solve everything with duels, can you? No. It's not the solution to all of life's problems.

No, it's not the solution to really any, apart from getting rid of excess bullets. No, I think that's bad luck. I think being thrown off a horse over a bridge, landing in the river and drowning is a series of, a chain of unlucky events to the extent that I find it implausible that that could have happened.

Yes. So very unlucky. It's unlucky for the guy who did that to then just happen to wander into a cave for no narrative reason, only to meet the guy whose fiancée he murdered years before. What are the chances? That is very unlikely.

There are loads of caves and for them to both roll off the hill and get splattered to pieces, unlucky yet again. They could have landed in the River Severn. The odds against any of this happening is astronomical. Be buried alive is certainly unfortunate. I'm not sure. It's probably statistically, it probably happens now and then. But it's considered bad luck. It is definitely not considered good luck, is it, to be buried alive? Maggie's well. I don't know if there's any luck involved in that. That's just a sad, sad story.

She apparently became the inspiration for Ophelia in Hamlet. So it did inspire Shakespeare? That's the bit that's meant to have inspired Shakespeare. Oh, very nice. And who wrote Fall of the House of Usher? Was that Poe? Poe, yeah. Not the character from Teletubbies.

That story is meant to have inspired him, the grave one. Yeah, of course, because that's the plot of the Fall of the House of Usher. Five out of five. It's very unlucky. Yes. Unlucky, mate. And it's even allegedly inspired two of literature's most famous tragic deaths. Bad, bad news.

Okay, final category. Girl power. What? The Bechdel test the bechdel tests the locked in the tomb story is the one that passes the bechdel test yes yeah how come it passes the bechdel test um because she it wasn't anything to do with a man it was just it was just a woman that died of the plague but it has to have a second woman in the story for it to pass. Yeah. Well, maybe that was who bit her. You can't add a female zombie into the story in order to go to pass the Bechdel test. That story did not pass the Bechdel test.

Oh, well, you're just the patriarchy, aren't you? The zombie patriarchy. I'm the zombie patriarchy. It's been said many times. To be honest, of the two, the one that's most likely to be able to smash through a glass ceiling is a zombie. But what I've just realised is... What?

I think actually it's quite a high figure for girl power. Because most of the characters do tell you what they want, what they really, really want. They do, don't they? They make what they want very clear. Yeah, they really, really, really want to not be buried alive. Which I think is what Ziggy's Cigar is supposed to mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Obviously, they had to change it a little bit because it was aimed at kids.

Either that or open casket. That's why people do open casket, isn't it? Get in there with a little pin. Get in there with a little brooch. Bing. Just so you know. And that's why you've been kicked out of every open casket funeral you've been to. Yep, not thanked once, but I'm doing them a favour.

It will pay off. I think it's quite girl power. In the case of the guys falling off the mountain, that's literally a case of two becoming one. One big mess. And I've exhausted the Spice Girl songs that I know, so I can't make any more Spice Girl references. They're all quite posh. None of them were

very sporty. Oh, no, wait, dueling is a sport. Some of it was scary. There were no babies. That's where you lose it. Ah, yeah, no babies. There are five Spice Girls. Do we have ginger or babies? It's maybe hot-hot. Yeah, oh, of course she would have been flame-haired. Yes. Yeah, clearly a redhead.

Yep, yep, you've got sporty, ginger, posh, scary. It's four out of five. Yes. I'll take that. I will take that. Gil Powell. I call this general meeting of the Lawmen's Society to a close.

Yes, I think that's for the best. To quote one of their songs, I think we should stop right now. Thank you very much. much you've been listening to lawmen with me alistair beckett king and me james shakeshaft and if you enjoy listening to us why not look at us as well yeah because we're doing a live stream of uh of this show. Our second live stream. Join us on Sunday the 30th of August at twitch.tv forward slash lawmenpod. It's like a podcast

for your eyes. I'm going to call it iPodcast. An iPod? Yeah. We'll just call it the iPod. We'll call it that. I just register the domain right now. Just getting some hats printed. They're Stetsons. Mike, Mike.

That looks good. Yeah, looks good, my end. I've got apple pie and hot custard. Are you eating a pie and custard? I've got apple pie and custard to my side. I'm not eating it at the moment. That is essential in a recording environment, of course, to have a pie.

Yes. The only problem is when hobos float over towards it and you have to keep shoving them away. Yeah, flapping their big shoes as though they were sort of flippers. Yep, like... Yeah, I know the type. Yep. All right, I'll do a clap.

Three, two, one. Were you late? To the leisurely, unnecessary extra pause. I was late. Yeah. I was late to my own clap there. That got weird. I did clap before you that time.

It's hypothesised on the Ross one. That's the prophecy foretold. Theorising that one could clap before another clap, Alistair Beckett King stepped into the recording booth and vanished. I felt I did a disservice to your story about the Shakespeare gift shop by not having any Shakespeare play- related merchandise puns ready. Oh. So I've spent the last two days since we recorded coming up with Shakespeare play related merchandise puns. Let's hear them. This is what happens when I prepare jokes for the podcast. Just forewarned

your sides are going to be a blooming mess. I will steal mine ears. Yes. You also need a working knowledge of all of Shakespeare's plays, including some of the, annoyingly, some of the better puns are some of the more obscure plays. Of course they are. I mean, you've got your measure-for-measure measuring jokes. Your Midsummer Night's Dream Catchers. Very good.

Your Loves Labour's Lost box set. That's tenuous. That one actually hurt me physically. The all's well that ends well, well. In a gift shop. Is there a garden centre annex? Yeah, they'll deliver. Oh, all right, okay.

The Pericles Prince of Tyre, Tyre Iron. Sorry, is that being one of the less famous plays, is that one of the better puns in your opinion? Just to clarify. A tyre iron from a gift shop. Anthony and Cleopatra, novelty salt and pepper shakers, one's a pair of boobs with an asp on it. The Cymbeline symbols.

Yep, yeah, all right. And Coriolanusol. That is actually my favourite. Not a product you can get in a gift shop. You're not going to the right gift shops. In the cafe, you could have much ado about muffin. Oh, yes. You could have much ado about muffin.

And on top of it, you could pour Titus Andronic custard. Oh, that's nice. Didn't even prepare these, Lesnar. What? But would you pour the Titus Andronic custard from a measure for measure measuring jug?