Loremen Podcast - S3 Ep82: Loremen S3 Ep 82 - The Ghost and Mr Chicken

Episode Date: October 7, 2021

A dead husband returns with a dreadful warning... Yes, it's another spoopy episode! This tale of tragedy and terror comes from the North East of England. Whilst we think it might not be a real ghost (and we are certain it's not a real chicken) this investigation does afford a rare opportunity to meet Joseph Stalin at the seaside. And is only slightly undermined by the Loreboys laughing at the protagonist's name. Loreboys nether say die! Support the Loremen here (and get stuff): patreon.com/loremenpod 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 Alistair Beckett-King. And I'm James Shakeshaft. And James. This is a properly good spooky ghost story I've got for you. Yes, it's got a lot of classic elements. Oh, yes. Being asleep when the ghost appeared. Yeah, only one person's seeing it.

All the elements are there. Yeah. And it comes from the north-east of England. It's a nor'easter. It's the tale of the ghost and Mr. Chicken. Very serious, James. I don't know what you're laughing about. No, me neither. I was thinking about something else. I was't know what you're laughing about. No, me neither. I was thinking about something else.

I was thinking about a different Mr. Chicken. Sletter Lewis story, little James. Oh, yes, please. I've got my cocoa. We're in spooky month, and I'm bringing you another spooky tale. It better be spooky. I'm literally taking a leaf out of your book, Ghosts Over Britain. But now I've lost my place because I use leaves as bookmarks.

Thank you to Peter Mossy Moss. The Mossmeister General. Yeah, Mr. Moss. Thank you, Peter Moss, for writing Ghosts Over Britain in the 70s. Ghosts Over Britain. Yeah, just put your own sort of Pathé newsreel of various ghosts doing things and like Stalin shaking hands with a ghost. Super easy to Photoshop out.

Saved Stalin's propagandists a little bit of time there. Did he do just like stock footage so that they could drop in other people? Yeah, it would make sense for Stalin to just get like shots of him on the beach having a laugh near a river and then they could just pop in people who had not crossed him at a later date.

Yeah. Basically what we're saying is Soviet propaganda was like those things where you pop your head through at the beach and you look like you're a strong man. Yes. Or a beautiful lady. Yeah, they needed that sort of technology. I've just realised that those things at the beach and you look like you're a strongman. Yes. Or a beautiful lady. Yeah, they needed that sort of technology.

I've just realised that those things on the beach were the first Photoshop, really, weren't they? Yes. That's the original airbrushing, if you want to look great in your picture. Yeah, because whenever I'd show that to my grumpy uncle... Grumple. He'd go, fake. You were never a circus strongman.

Fake. She wasn't a donkey. So this story, Peter Moss calls this ghost the Silent Summoner. Ooh. Yeah, pretty sinister. That's a spoopy name. And really, I should warn you and the listener, this is an unrelentingly spooky and tragic story,

apart from one detail which massively undermines the whole atmosphere. Ooh. So sorry about that in advance. Is it that the person in question did the whole thing through one of those beachside stick-your-head-through things? If anything, that would be a little bit more sober and sombre than the real thing. According to Peter Moss, it takes place in County Durham on Sherbrunn Road. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Now, come on. Someone's trying to airbrush history right there. There is no Sherbourne Road in County Durham. Now, this may just be a mistake, or it could just be an old-fashioned 1970s typo. Sherbourne Road is what he means. Maybe he's trying to protect the identity of Sherbourne Road very, very poorly.

Which is understandable. Sherbourne Road, not to be confused with Sherbourne Village. Sherbourne Road is a slightly different place in County Durham. Is it not the way to the village? Yeah, okay, it's on the way. It's on the way. The same way that Oxford Street is not in Oxford. Yes, yes. And Gare de Lyon in Paris

is not in Lyon. That is confusing because Gare means station, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You would expect Lyon Station to be in Lyon. Yeah, when you do your best bit of French ticket person on the French underground, on the French London underground. Excusez-moi, garçon. Excusez-moi, je voudrais un billet pour Gare de Lyon.

And he literally went, in French, basically went, you want to go to Lyon? This is the French London underground, you idiot. Which is like someone... Yeah, it's a bit like being on the French London Underground, you idiot. Which is like someone... Yeah, it's a bit like being on the tube and saying you want to go to Canada when you actually want to go to Canada water. Yes, I want to slide down a mud chute. When actually you just want to go to the station mud chute.

Which is equally ridiculous that that exists. Yeah, it's funny though. However, I do think if you said that to someone on the underground, they are mostly not French and they would realise what you meant without the withering look of a disapproving maitre d'. But they're also in London, so they probably not make eye contact with you and push you down their nearest mud chute.

That is true. Also, some of them are French. There's no rules. There's no legal way they can stop them, James, and that's why we need to vote leave. One, irony doesn't come out on podcasts. Two, this is many years too late. Yeah. For the benefit of listeners, it's happened. It's too late. Yes.

The French are gone. Yes. And the London Underground has never been calmer. Four. But the French London Underground, what? Absolute nightmare. So we're on Sherbourne Road. When I was in school, I lived in a different former pit village that is a suburb of Durham, in County Durham. I suppose where I lived was a bit posher than Sherbourne Road.

So Sherbourne Road was the rougher bit. For people who don't know, a pit village is a village that was associated with a mine. Not just a village that was itself a hole. However, in the case of Sherbourne Road, I think it seems to have gone a bit upmarket. I was on Google Street View and there was a tanning salon with the amazing name Infinite Tan. Right. Yeah, that sounds dangerous. I've just realised that's one of them shops that could have been around 200 years ago,

but would have given you a very different service. So what would a tanner have done? Don't they just sort of colour leather or treat leather to turn it into clothes? But still infinitely. But the reason I mention infinite tan is that there is a cafe two doors down called Infinite Scran.

The sequel. Yes. Is it like when you get those dodgy knockoff films? Yeah. That are just like Predator of the Aliens? Yes. Snow White and Several Dwarves. And they've got almost the same font to try and lure people in by accident.

I don't know how widely used the term Scran is. It means food, if you don't know, listener. Yes. I'd say that's a Midlands and up term for food. I don't think people tend to use scran down south is that right okay i don't know about this one but do you remember it seems to have stopped now but do you remember there was sort of self scan at the supermarket where you would actually take one of the things around with you and oh yeah in the northeast that was known as the scan and gan scan and gan nice scan and gan i know isn't that gorgeous? The Scan and Gan. So much better than Scan and Go. Definitely.

Makes me want to be sick. Scan and Go. Scan and Gan. Gorgeous. So in 1937, John Mahan died of bronchitis. Oh. We're into the tragedy here. Just got real downbeat all of a sudden.

He lived on Sherbourne Road and he died leaving behind his wife, Jane, and their five children. So she, in straitened circumstances, took on a lodger. And that lodger's name was Mr. Chicken. Mr. Ben Chicken. Mr. Bee Chicken. Mr. Bee. I just want to be clear. He was a human. I've seen the picture of him in the book

well because it sounds like the naming conventions of kids books whereby everyone's surname is the animal that they are which I always thought is impractical because it means you can have one of each animal or they're all related Mr. Wolf, what's the time Mr. Wolf yes, for example

Mr. Chicken was a human the time Mr. Wolf? Yes. For example. Mr. Chicken was a human man. Not a sort of chicken boo from Animaniacs situation. He's not seven chickens in a trench coat. No, he wasn't. He was a miner from Ushamur, which should be pronounced Ushamur. But I pronounce it Ushamur because it sounds like something that your boss would say if you worked in a cinema yes apparently it means wolf forest more oh yeah so mr chicken probably let's get right out of there he would have been glad to leave yes sherbin road might be a little

bit down market but at least he's free from the wolves the terror of wolf so that's our mr chicken the usher more mr chicken now I tried to corroborate this story and I came upon a completely separate Mr. Chicken. London has its own Mr. Chicken. It's just like a chicken shop mascot now. Yes, first of all, there is a branch of chicken shops called Mr. Chicken. This is all about chicken shops.

Mr. Chicken is a pseudonym. This Mr. Chicken, his real name, I just can't believe this is true, his real name is Morris B. Casanova. That's his real name. How do you get a pseudonym if your real name is Morris B. Casanova? Oh, wow. He is the graphic designer who has designed every chicken shop graphic in London. So his sign company make all of them and they refer to him as Mr. Chicken. You need a chicken shop sign doing, you go to Mr. Chicken. This was discovered by the graphic designer,

Sharon Hughes, who was writing a book about the aesthetics of chicken shop signs. They're much more common in London than they are in other parts of the country. If you haven't seen them, the chickens are always thrilled to be serving you chicken. They're like really happy cartoon chickens. I used to have a bit of stand-up about how they should replace them with, you know, those holograms which sort of change as you walk past. Yes. So that as you go past the chicken shop, the chicken gradually undergoes a slow dawning realisation of everything.

He's been selling out his chicken family. Yeah, he has. It's just the enthusiasm of them is way too much for a chicken selling you fried chicken. It makes you think that maybe it's not actually chicken in them. Yeah. Like, why is the chicken so pleased? Is he getting one over on us? Yes.

So Mr. Casanova, aka Mr. Chicken, reckons that 90% of London chicken shop signs were either designed by him or plagiarised from his designs. And we're talking about big names here. We're talking about Chickenland. Yeah. Chicken Point. Hen Cottage talking about big names here. We're talking about Chickenland. Yeah. Chicken Point. Hen Cottage. Favourable Chicken.

Are we talking about any state of the United States of America? Fried Chicken. Dixieland Chicken. Carolina Chicken. Idaho Fried Chicken. And of course, the pizza chicken combo shop, Chick Piz in Stoke Newington. My favourite shop in South London

is in Brixton. It's hairdressers or barbers and it's called Haircut Sir with a question mark at the end. Wow, that's great.

I love that. So back to the tragedy. So a year after Mr Chicken moved in as a lodger. He's probably just need to pop some new newspaper down for him every week or so fill up his grain silo

a year after he moved in he and June were married and Peter Moss gives us a beautiful quote from Mr. Chicken it was not love then says Mr. Chicken just convenience real love came later which is quite sweet they married as a marriage of convenience,

but they came to love each other. And he came to feel great affection for her children. Flash forward to 1944. And I've got to be honest, Peter Moss's writing is really good, so I'm going to quote him directly here. In mid-June 1944, with the excitement and dread of the invasion of Europe, the universal topic, Ben Chicken dreamed, or perhaps saw, he is not sure which, the figure of a perfectly ordinary working man in modern clothing standing silently beside the bed, staring hard

at the occupants. The apparition stayed long enough for Ben to register every detail of face and dress, and then vanished. Okay, a dream. A one-off dream of a working man watching him and his wife sleeping, and at breakfast the next morning, probably eating eggs. I don't know.

He might feel a bit weird about that. Is he like the logo? Is he sort of coming to the realisation? Yeah, just doing a big thumbs up and a smile, but with sadness in the eyes. He described the apparition he had seen to June, little realising that he was point by point describing the very visage of her late husband, John Mahan, who had died just a few years earlier. A man who Ben Chicken had never seen.

Sorry, so she's now married to Ben Chicken and she used to be married to... John Mahan. So she used to be married to a man and now she's married to a chicken. Which is a marriage of convenience because there's nothing more convenient than marrying a chicken. So thank you for clarifying that. So that vision that he had seen, that dream could be a vision returned night after night. Oh. Well, you know, Mr. Chicken and June, they were faithful Catholics.

And he began to feel a little bit of panic about this. It seemed that her husband was still in love with her. And what was going to happen to him in the hereafter? Oh, good point. Who was she going to go to? He almost found himself becoming jealous of the spirit. He didn't know why it was there, if it had a message to send or whether it was there as a threat or a warning. And I'm sorry to say, the meaning of the vision became clear very quickly. A telegram arrived informing Jane that her eldest son, John Robert, had been killed in action in the Second World War.

Oh, no. And although the vision returned, it became less and less frequent over the course of that year. And then they moved to Ushermore, where Mr. Chicken grew up. Oh, no. Into a place called Chestnut Grove. And I cannot stress how much that place in real life does not look like how you imagine it based on the name Chestnut Grove. Chestnut Grove. It is a row of council built bungalows in County Durham.

Oh. Please, Americans, find out what England looks like. It doesn't look like how you imagine Chestnut Grove to look. It's not as dappled as I'm thinking then. There's not any trees, for one thing. It's not a grove. And these thatch cottages that the council built. Yeah, these quaint little houses.

So they lived there quite happily until 1973, when, according to Mossy, time collapsed. Oh, God. He doesn't really explain what he means by that, but it's a great phrase. Oh, my God. In mid-1973, time collapsed, and the awful apprehension of almost 20 years earlier flooded back, as once again the incorporeal Mr. Mahan stood beside the bed, as he had before, silent and ominous. For several weeks, Ben prayed in vain that his sleep that night would be free of the praying figure,

which he knew on waking presaged some disaster. Yeah, so he knew it was going to be a harbinger of tragedy. And right enough, he returned home from the pit a few days later to find Jane collapsed on the floor. Oh. And she died three weeks later. Oh, no. So no amount of humorous surnames can really lighten that up. No, not at all.

Oh. The Phantom didn't reappear until 1975, and when he saw it, it was so vivid he couldn't believe that it was a vision. And within hours of seeing it, he received news that his youngest adoptive son, Vincent, had collapsed while driving a lorry and died in hospital.

Oh, dear. I know, it's a really sad story. I mean, it's a good thing this guy's surname is Chicken. Yeah, that's doing a lot of the hard work for us comedy-wise. So the monster leaves the unusual case of Mr. Chicken with the question of what was awaiting him after death. Ben Chicken, not unnaturally, lives in dread of the recurring phantom. It seems to Ben that there is only one more thing that it can come for.

We can only hope that the answer Christ gave to the Sadducees is the true one. In the resurrection, they will neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as angels of God in heaven. So he's really worried that when he dies,

he's going to be in a massive fight with Mr. Man, I think. Mr. Man's going to come at him. Man versus chicken. Oh, no. Who would win? Is it a human-sized chicken or ten chicken-sized man's?

Would you rather battle in heaven? I mentioned that I looked for corroboration for this. And there's a movie. Is there? The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, 1966. There is a movie called The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. From 66? From 1966, which, yes, is before this happened and is not about this, it turns out.

But I watched it yesterday, just to be sure. And is the chicken... This is the annoying thing about it, James. There's no chicken in that film. I watched the whole film waiting for the chicken to come in. You could say that you missed the chicken. I missed Mr. Chicken. I was like 50 minutes into the film

and I realised that it's like a spooky haunted house comedy and the main character is a coward and he's Mr. Chicken because he is a chicken. Oh, he's a chicken. But since the main story was sad, I always like to have a look at the goofs on IMDb. You got to. Because almost none of them, I think, qualify as goofs.

Oh, yeah, okay. They're just descriptions of things that you have to do if you're making a film. It's things like, when he slides down the chute into the coal bucket, it's a stunt actor. Yeah, that's not a mistake. That's just how you shoot stunts.

Yeah, they don't really do goofs in action films. Like, when the protagonist punches the other man in the face, he doesn't break the small bones in his hand and seems to be able to punch other people without being upset by it yeah it's so bizarre when the uh the main character a family man who's driven to the edge and beyond kills the criminals he doesn't seem upset by his actions it's unlikely that such a psychopath would have been able to get a whole family in the first place almost all the plot holes are just when he points his torch at things in the haunted house,

the spot of the torch doesn't quite line up. Because this was 1966, and torches aren't bright enough to light a set in 1966, so there's a second person on a spot moving a spot around the haunted house. There's a plot hole here that these ghosts are played by actors. They're here in the credits at the end, around the haunted house. There's a plot hole here that these ghosts are played by actors. They're here in the credits at the end,

and the person playing the ghost didn't die till 20 years after this film was made. So there you have it, James. That was a tale of horrible misery, poverty, sadness, death, somewhat lightened by us laughing at one of the protagonist's names yes and in context a second character's name yes i didn't realize that john mahan mahan mahan yeah like saying it like that a handbag yes it's like you got hiccups but a man it's like of mice and men but instead of mice it's a chicken and it's not men it's just one man yep man that's exactly what it's like yeah so to the scores my first category for you adjusts tie his names oh naming right naming yes okay then um i accept my five points thank you yeah i mean

mr chicken james mr b chicken mr b chicken are you b chicken uh the correct grammar is Thank you. Yeah, I mean... Mr. Chicken, James. Mr. Bee Chicken. Mr. Bee Chicken. Are you Bee Chicken? The correct grammar is, do you, Bee Chicken? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I haven't even mentioned Morris B. Casanova. Really? The B also stands for Benjamin.

It's the same B. So he is also a Ben Chicken, in a way. In a way, we've got two Ben Chickens. Double Ben Chicken. So you've got Double Chicken. Double Chicken. Have I mentioned Double Chicken on this Double Ben Chicken. So you've got Double Chicken. Double Chicken. Have I mentioned Double Chicken on this podcast, by the way? What is Double Chicken?

Well, it's a thing from that workplace where they used to bully me. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. One day we read a story about a man who ate two roast dinners a day. And I, you know, fun for the office, thought we'd ask like what two roast dinners would you have? Yeah, yeah. You know, pork and beef maybe, or lamb and chicken. And one person said, double chicken.

Double chicken. Two chicken. He'd have two chicken roasts. Which for me, it was great because it meant someone else was getting mocked mercilessly for a few minutes. I bet you leapt upon them. Oh yeah, I was like George McFly in the diner when they pick on Marty. You're like two chickens, you idiot! Because

the nature of roasts is that you get to go back. A roast dinner has seconds built in. That's part of the thing. The leftovers. Because that's why I don't like a pub roast, is because you don't get to have a second's helpings. Or you just have to buy another roast dinner. The thing is, I mean, I'm vegan and nobody wants seconds from a nut roast firsts is bad enough i roasted a cauliflower the other

day like you see on the news and uh it was really nice yes i've had some good roast cauliflower to be honest it's a nice little secret i mean it is still roast cauliflower so let's not go crazy sure let's not overstate how delicious it is but but it can be very nice. It wasn't as God awful as I feared. Yeah. I know somebody who was on, you know, those dating websites where you can be like dating in uniform, all that sort of thing.

She was on one for millionaires. Oh. For, you know, so women who wanted to go out with men who were millionaires. And one of the guys she went on a date with ate an entire roast chicken to impress her. Did it work? She's still telling the story.

It did. It did not work. It did make an impression. But yeah, it's memorable, but not impressive per se. Also, I mean, how needy are you if you're already a millionaire? You don't think you're impressive enough going into a meeting. I'm not an expert on dating, James. But how did she know he wasn't just really hungry for chicken?

Because I don't think you do. I think he sort of gave her a look. I mean, I wasn't there. I wasn't a chaperone. Did he say, you're about to be impressed when they brought out his dinner, and then at 10 to 20 minutes later go, are you impressed? I'm impressed, bro.

Are you not entertained? I could get another one. I'm a millionaire. Oh, postscript for the work bullying thing. For the guy's next birthday, we bought him two frozen roast chicken dinners. I can't endorse that as a vegan, but it is very funny. Yes.

By the way, it was some sort of processed chicken, so at least it was using up all the bits. Oh, good, good. Probably leave that bit out. It's not what the person making the roast dinner said about the chicken particles. So yeah, all right, it's five. Thank you. Second category, supernatural. Yes. Now, we've got three appearances of the same ghost. We've acknowledged it might be a dream, but the dream, even if it is a dream, includes the facial details that could only be John Mahan. Mahan. Oh, Mahan. Yes, that's odd. He just stands there, silent, unspeaking, unmoving, staring down at them, night after night.

Mrs. Chicken Kneeman. Not have any pictures of her ex-husband around? It was the 1930s, and this is a pit village in County Durham. People couldn't afford cameras. You had one picture taken when you went to the beach through one of those big weightlifter beautiful lady things and that was all you got i suppose yeah if he'd have said if he'd have described the dream of and it had the guy's face but his body was of like a buxom cook or a man in a singlet holding a barbell an actual donkey that would have told us that that he'd got it from a photograph,

but obviously. Clearly it came from the spiritual realm, James. And do you get to choose your clothes when you're a ghost? I think usually you wear what you were wearing when you died. Oh, no. Conventionally, don't you? Tends to be. It's going to be awful if you were going to a costume party

dressed as Queen Elizabeth and then you died. Because I look quite a lot like her anyway, and everyone will be like, oh, it's Queen Elizabeth. And I'd have to be like, I'm actually from the 90s. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not of the time period. It was a costume. It was fashionable

to dress like the 70s. I don't know why I would have been dressing up as Queen Elizabeth in the 90s. There was the big Tudor comeback, wasn't there? Tudors were in. It was just after Britpop. Stuarts were out

dressing like a plantagenet what are you it's from the 80s actually they did they had the new romantics they sort of dressed in the format with the frilly sleeves and when the teddy boys dressed like edwardians that's where the name comes from is it i didn't know that yeah i think edward it was a sort of a spoof edwardian type dress i didn't know that fascinating i mean i'm gonna google it before i let this get through the edit i've gone really on out on a limb there i hope it is because that would be an amazing fact if it's true so come on this is a pretty straightforward good old ghost story yeah like if i was being cheap i'd say three because there were three times that it appeared, but four because there's the fourth sighting that we're all worried about. Yeah.

And also, I don't know, from the ghost point of view, this sounds like it's a ghost that's aware. You know, sometimes you get ghosts that aren't aware of their hauntings. They just kind of get on with their stuff and you happen to see it or you don't. But there are some ghosts that seemingly are aware of... This is a ghost making a point. Because what he's thinking is he's come back to warn his wife that his son's gonna die and he's found her in bed with a chicken oh yeah that's pretty awkward no wonder he's staring and coming back every night for a year

just to really try it's a real head scratcher so i'm gonna go full fives whoa okay wow i'll pop that in my back pocket my next category is local color because i offered you the uh infinite tan and infinite scran i offered you the many chicken shops of london yeah and they were all red basically red and white but sometimes blue the colors of the american flag and the british flag and the french flag and several other nations cuba most flags isn't it italy no that's like italy is like ireland's flag but just like with a filter on to make it look a bit better is it or ireland is at least flag but gone through on a bit of a too hot wash i think we should get this flag detour yeah this is the category anyone who would be interested in this

will be also incredibly angered by how wrong we're getting flags local color but that color is brown yeah i mean if you look at chestnut grove yeah chestnuts a form of brown somewhat brown sherborne is is a brown stream as listeners to the podcast know well tanning of either type is basically brown so these are multiple instances of the same colour. Of the same colour. What colour is a chicken when it's done? That's brown. Really brown, yeah, quite brown. So there is definitely one big local colour.

But you brought a lot of local... What I liked is that you brought a lot of local colour and you gave us a lot of context for this story. Chestnut Grove, not as nice as it sounds. Sorry, the people of Chestnut Grove. I as nice as it sounds. Sorry, the people of Chestnut Grove. I think it's got to be low because there's not many colours.

No. I can't believe I've caught in a web of my own devising once again. Caught in your own brown web. Three. Three. Three.

Oh, okay. Okay, not bad. I mean, I couldn't have expected that five streak to continue. No. Final category, chicken. Chicken.

Chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken. Oh, the name King doesn't like chickens. Unfortunately, he's not judging this. Don't you know that eggs are poison? Mr. Chicken. Morris B. Casanova, a.k.a. Mr. Chicken. A second Mr. Chicken. Hen Cottage.

Do you mean Chicken Cottage? No. Hen Cottage. The non-alliterative rip-off of Chicken Cottage. Chick Piz. Chick Piz. Or should it be Chick Peets?

How do you pronounce the abbreviation of pizza? Yeah. Should it be Chick Peezes or Chick Peets? Has it got two Zs? Two Zs. That's pizz.

Otherwise it would be pizzazz. But it's short of context. You don't know it's Italian. I did once hear someone say pizza. Pizza. Pizza. It's like, have you just heard about pizzas now? What is this?

Was this... Is it 1961? Were you time travelling? Where do you live? Chestnut Grove. How have you not heard about pizzas until now? Were you that Italian princess that they invented it for? Wasn't her name Margarita?

Yes. Yeah. I prefer the other Italian princess, Alfunghi. Quattro Saison. And of course, spicy chicken. The problem is I don't know enough pizza names because I can't eat pizzas. I can't continue this riff. It's good that pizzas weren't invented in Britain

because they'd be called margarets. Oh, yeah. I'll just have a Maggie. Can I have a pie Margaret? A Maggie pie. Like a little Thatcher cake. No dairy in that, famously. And it's only cooked on one side

because that, ladies, not for turning. A little golf clap for that. That was a good impression of Thatcher, wasn't it? Yes, it was. And Google milk snatcher if you're an American and didn't understand that joke. But, of course, the items of food we've invented there, there's only one place that would sell them, and that is Infinite Scram, a place in which the food options are unlimited by your imagination

or the laws of physics. Yeah, you could have literally anything. Literally any food that's available. Infinite roast dinners. You could have a pizza from an alternative universe where it was invented by Margaret Thatcher, as opposed to an actual Mr. Whippy from this universe, which was invented by Margaret Thatcher.

I don't even like Mr. Whippy. I hate soft ice cream. I think that's your political leanings there, colouring your taste buds. We have had complaints. We keep allowing our political opinions to creep into the podcast, and here I am saying I don't like Mr. Whippy. That is big stuff. Yeah, we are going to get...

If you also agree with us on Thatcher or Mr. Whippy, give us a five-star review to make up for the negative feedback we'll be getting off that. Yes, please do. We try to keep our politics out of it, but when Mr. Whippy comes up, I can't hold you back. It's too soft. It's too soft.

Okay. What was the score? There's also Mr. Chicken from The Ghost and Mr. Chicken 1966. Oh, that's minimum three chickens. That's a lot of chickens. They got the two chickens your co-worker had. I think we're at about 19 chickens. Five chickens.

Five out of five for chicken. It's got to be. I can't disrespect them any more than I already have. Yes. I think this is one of the highest scoring episodes for a while. Yeah. I'm very happy. I don't know if it's guilt scores,

because it was actually quite a sad story inside. I'm very happy. I don't know if it's guilt scores because it was actually quite a sad story inside it that was quite recent. Because to be fair, I'm sure we've had sadder stories, but it's because it's reasonably recent that it seems sadder. If a bad thing happens to a Victorian,

hilarious. Yeah. But this happened to someone from County Durham in the 70s. Yes. Things weren't going that great before the ghost. I hope no one gets any nightmares because this is spooky month. before the ghost i hope no one gets any nightmares because

this is spooky month yep so no one gets any nightmares from this of someone peering at them during the night from behind a beach side stick your head through thing is there a better name from them stick your head through thing you know the one that makes you look like you're a circus strongman that's what they're called they're probably all made by one guy who's called mr beach sign thing where you stick your head through and it makes you look like a circus strongman but his real name's mr b casanova it's the same man he does all the drawing how do you weave this world of mystery mr b casanova you have been listening to lawmen with me alistair beckett king and me james shakeshaft and you know james i think sometimes people want to support the podcast. How can they do that? Well, they can go to the internet, to a website called patreon.com forward slash lawmen pod. And if you don't want to do that, you can just give us a five star review.

Oh, yes. And you can't give us less than five stars. I think the website's broken or something. Yeah. If it does allow you to give less than five stars, then you need to re-go back in and give it five stars. Yeah. Yeah.

There's one person in America that put three stars in, and that means that his computer's broken. Alistair, I have two apologies. Yeah? Two omissions. Omissions or emissions? Two omissions. Oh, my goodness. What a relief apology one when we

were talking about funny takeaway shop names yeah chickpeas etc i neglected to mention my favorite one from when i lived in clapham which was called almost sort of seems like winsomely, Pizza Today and Every Day. Wow, so I did a vicar name that. It's a good call to action though. And I think it was a chicken shot. And my other apology is when we were talking about Mr. Mahan looking down on his wife in bed with Mr. Chicken, I did not refer to him as a cluck old at any point. And I can only apologise for not having done that. If I had a time machine,

after the other two things that I do with my time machine, the third would be go back to the record of this and remind myself to say cluck old. Lessons have been learned. We'll take the point and we'll move on.