Loremen Podcast - S4 Ep25: Loremen S4 Ep25 - The Dragon of Norton Fitzwarren with Lexx Education

Episode Date: December 15, 2022

Not one but TWO guests this week! The boys are joined by comedian Laura Lexx and her normal brother Ron (aka the Lexx Education podcast). Brother Ron brings in a local legend that's really quite unique. Really. In fact, the "Meat Dragon" of Norton Fitzwarren may not exist at all outside of Ron's fevered imagination. Loreboys nether say die! Check the sweet, sweet merch here... https://www.teepublic.com/stores/loremen-podcast?ref_id=24631 Support the Loremen here (and get stuff): patreon.com/loremenpod ko-fi.com/loremen @loremenpod www.instagram.com/loremenpod www.facebook.com/loremenpod

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. James? Yes? Let me wish you a Christmas pig. A Christmas pig to you too, sir. A Christmas pig to everyone.

Oh, it gets it earlier every year, doesn't it? It seems to. James, what have you got in that meaty sack there? Oh, my God. Well, that is an appropriate, if grotesque, image. I have the podcast hosts, Laura Lex and her brother Ron, from Lex Education, and they've got a real meaty story for us.

That's brother in the familial sense. He's not a monk. He's not Laura Lex and Brother Ron. To be honest, I didn't ask. What's the story? It's the dragon of Norton Fitzwarren. Alistair. Hello, James.

How are you? I'm well, thank you. Good. Are you getting into the Christmas vibe? Yes, I love Christmas. As you know? I'm well, thank you. Good. Are you getting into the Christmas vibe? Yes, I love Christmas. As you know, I love Christmas, but I hate buying Christmas presents. So it's a... Really? I love to receive them though. So for me, it's a double-edged season. Alistair, have a rummage around in my stocking. Glad to. This is a Christmas-based request. Well, I'm rummaging already, yeah.

Because I've got two presents for you. Mmm. In the format of comedian Laura Lex and her normal brother Ron. Yay! Hello. You are unwrapped. Hello, I'm Laura. Hello. I'm Ron. Normal Ron. Hi, Laura and Ron. They're from the podcast Lex Education,

which is very funny and also actually very informative. Is it it are you finding that yes well done ron that's your job well done thank you he did say funny first though so yeah well that's to be expected i'm hilarious wherever i am but i've not retained a single piece of information from our podcast it's been six months so I love it when people say they're learning because I'm like well at least one person is have you learned anything Ron I've relearned a lot of stuff yeah um I don't remember GCSEs being

this hard to be honest they go into quite a lot of detail bloody do I like to think of us as kind of like the science teachers of the podcast school and you guys are like the history teachers the cool history teachers yeah what like the kinds that have a leather jacket the kind and an ex-wife the kind she's going through a difficult divorce actually that's why i have to sit around on the chair this way now i've got a confession to make on this story. So we're here to tell you about the Norton Fitzwarren dragon. Norton Fitzwarren is the village in Somerset that Ron and I grew up in. However, Ron and I remember this dragon very differently. Guys, are we in a Rasharon situation?

What? A Rasharon. It was a pun on Rashamon. A Rasharon. That's so good. Very differently. Guys, are we in a rash-a-ron situation? What? A rash-a-ron. It was a pun on rash-a-mon. A rash-a-ron. That's so good. That's such a good pun, James. It was too good for you to expect it to go over with slightly dodgy internet. A rash-a-ron situation.

On the recording, ooh, that is going to be first class. I'm going to be laughing at that in the end. Would you like to explain it so maybe the listeners can clearly law right? Could you explain that joke? Well. i don't know what that meant the chap in the corner of your screen is called ron yep probably bro to laura oh yeah or normal bro and rashomon is a japanese story that's told from a bunch of different perspectives am i right alistair because i'm out i'm already out my depth that's correct each character remembers it differently so it's a really good joke okay and like all good jokes it took a couple of minutes to explain yes well i've been trying to do some research into this

as well because honestly in in prepping for this i've felt like i've gone through a one-man mandela effect where i was told something that no one else i know has. And then I was doing some research, and then every, there's like six or seven websites that all say the same thing. And then at the end, they say, this is referencing an article by Richard Freeman. I can't find that article anywhere. Now she gives the details. Richard Freeman was you all along, Ron.

If you rearrange the letters of Richard Freeman, you get normal brother Ron. It's me, Ron. Well, I'm glad because whenever people are bringing stories only they remember, that means we're dealing with the oral tradition itself. So we're dealing with proper folklore, not something out of a book. So to me, this is great news. I'm very excited.

I think this is the smallest story in a way. Two people, Ron and Nelson Mandela. What was it? What was his name? Just Ron and Richard. Richard Friedman. Well, I remember as being Nelson Mandela. So I'm going to stick with that. Before we get into these various tales of dragons,

what is this town, this Norton, Fitzwarren? Because I'm from a Norton too. I'm from Chipping Norton. Are you? Alistair, you'll be able to tell from our accents. Norton means town of the north. Yeah. I suppose it does.

It does. That's annoying. Because all of these towns are in the south. Very southern. Yeah, very southern. Well, I didn't know that it was North Town. I know Fitzwarren, he was the local landowner, wasn't he, Ron? I did a bit of research into him because he'll come up later.

I mean, I guess Norton Fitzwarren. I think it is north of Taunton, which Taunton would have been the big town. So that comes from town on the tone, which is the river that runs through the tone. Oh, nice one, town. And Norton is north of Taunton. So maybe that's why it's got the north in it, Norton. It should be Norton Taunton.

Norton to Taunton. Yeah, Norton Taunton. Norton Taunton. Norton Taunton. Yeah. I'm glad we've cleared that up. Well, maybe they'll rename it. They better.

I thought Taunton was named after the Star Wars animal, the Taunton. What I'm going to do is I'm going to give you a laugh in jokes like that. And for like the Wrath of Ron thing. The Wrath of Ron. Yeah. Oh, that's lovely. You can just add it when you need it. You've stumbled upon a great pun.

What a great nerdy joke, everyone. There you go. And then you just use that at your will. I only didn't laugh at the Tauntaun joke because I was leaving a gap for Ron as the nerdy brother to jump in there. That's the only reason. I do know what a Tauntaun is against my will. in there that's the only reason i do know what a tauntaun is against my will and then i had an okayly constructed tauntaun joke to make but um in true spirit laura i feel like we've all fulfilled our destiny now he's an angry ron tauntaun i mean this is this is some lovely punnage guys

ron was your joke gonna be and i thought they smell bad on the outside no i was gonna I mean, this is some lovely punnage, guys. Ron, was your joke going to be, and I thought, they smell bad on the outside? No, I was going to say it is the town equivalent of slitting open a pack animal and sleeping in it. That's really good. Much more visceral. Wow, Ron, you're really mad at Taunton. Do you want to introduce, like, give a bit of context

for Norton Fitzwarren, Laura, considering you're not really going to join in in the story? I'm just going to undermine. Because there isn't a story, you absolute fantasist. It's just a fever dream you had in year six

that now you're like putting out there into the world. Anyway, so Norton Fitzwarren is quite a small village. It's not one of your picturesque countryside. If you're picturing Thatch, stop right now and think about far too many houses crammed into a valley. It used to be the home of Taunton Cider, quite a famous brewery spot, like cider making place. And you'll often, if you've ever worked in a pub, you'll probably see the silver barrows that have Taunton cider written on them. That's Norton. Now though, that's gone and there's a co-op there instead. So that's good, isn't it?

And I mean, what else? It's half built on a floodplain. It has lovely views of the Blagdon Hills, I think, and it sort of backs onto the Quantocks. So if you've ever driven from Taunton out to like Minehead or any of that north, Devon North Somerset coast, you might have been through Norton Fitzwarren. Oh, big time. Been to Butlin's Minehead as a youth. Oh, lolly. Lolly bit of coast there, yeah.

I've looked up a couple of place names around there uh how near is it to nether stowey oh i've seen signs for nether stowey i don't actually know where nether stowey is though what about withy come withy come withy come i know a wither list come yeah i know withy withy came it was a withy come and there was a i've just i happed across it in um law of the land friend of the show and there was a wealthy widow there who was a triple widow and was considered a witch oh no when she was buried they put iron nails in a coffin because she was a witch and that that sort of thing really deals with them they had the funeral everyone's kind of partied on back to her place to carry on the party went in the kitchen She was a witch and that sort of thing really deals with them. They had the funeral.

Everyone's kind of partied on back to her place to carry on the party. Went in the kitchen, presumably to the booze cupboard, and she was in there cooking bacon and eggs. Oh! Can't keep a good widow down. What night time was that? I think so. Like a weird student flat share doing breakfast at 8 p.m probably not her eggs then she was called joan khan oh wait a minute i've just looked at this this is a ruth

tongue tale it's a ruth tongue a ruth this is a ruth tongue yeah not sure not too sure we found there's a folklorist called ruth tongue and some of her works are disputed. Oh, no. Yeah. Imagine that wrong, just making up a story. I know. Shameful. And then putting it to the public record as well.

That's what he does to me every week with all this science he's trying to teach me. He's always telling me about things that are too small to ever prove they exist and then expecting me to accept it as fact. And citing people with clearly made- up names like Stephen Hawking. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Plank.

As if a scientist could be called that. We've never had a pair of guests on before. I didn't realise that they would undermine each other, Alistair. I didn't think there would be as much... I didn't think this was how it was going to go. I thought they'd be supporting each other's story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I'm like with my sister.

We just help each other out and support her and never argue. This is very weird. I don't want to start a chain of undermining and undermine you, James. I haven't undermined Laura once. That's a good point. You're very welcome to if you want, Ron. If you can. It's hard to undermine me, though, because I will readily give up on anything I thought I stood by in the face of pressure.

I'm just going to undermine you through my sweet storytelling ability and 45 minutes of research on my lunch break earlier. That's the plan. Bring it on. I want to be convinced because i knew so norton fitzwarren the village that we're from the crest of norton fitzwarren is a dragon it was on the school badge it's it's on the like the parish news there's this little sort of skeleton of a dragon so the norton fitzwarren dragon not surprising and i think the somerset logo is a dragon as well isn't it indeed

which got me very confused my whole childhood as to whether or not we were welsh to be perfectly honest so there's a lot of dragon mythology there and then when ron and i started talking about what we would possibly talk to you guys about on this podcast we sort of said all the dragon and then ron what did you say about the dragon it's a meat dragon pardon if someone uses the phrase meat dragon to you you'd remember it right yes yeah yeah i remember i remember when it happened earlier in this conversation yeah yeah yeah i don't think i'm ever gonna forget meat dragon so there me thinking, they wouldn't send 300 children to primary school with a meat dragon on their chests, would they? And I said to

Ron, I don't know what you mean, buddy. And he said, yeah, yeah, yeah. The dragon made of meat. Oh. Hold on, aren't all dragons made of meat? In a way. Not like this one. Oh. I remember in my year one or two topic book,

drawing a six panel comic about this meat dragon and getting praised for it. Because you blew the lid off the whole meat dragon conspiracy. Year one or two, you must have been like six or seven. Why are they teaching children about meat dragons at six years old? It's carved into the wood panels in the church. It's everywhere. Hey, now I've seen that wood panel, Ron, and I don't necessarily think that it is eating that person

in a non-consensual sort of way. The positioning of the eatness on that rude scream leads me to believe rude should be spelt very differently. It's very rude. We've been tossing around the phrase meat dragon for a while now. Too long. I still need some clarity on what a meat dragon is.

I now know what a meat dragon does and I don't like it. Right. We could learn what a meat dragon is along the way. So I'm close. To be fair, he's got us hooked. Yeah, got to tease the meat dragon. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm not sure I want to be part of a podcast that has the phrase tease the meat dragon.

I've already got t-shirts for you to say that now. Right, so our story starts in the Bronze Age There is a hill fort about 30 meters away I thought that was an Iron Age for hill forts Sorry, Ron, sorry Wow Is this hill fort a bit undermined? Is it basically on Swiss cheese?

Actually, a very early example of getting undermined is it is it on basically on swiss cheese actually a very early example of getting undermined by laura was when i was in very young and when i was going on my first ever school trip i go home i'm very excited i tell my family i'm going to the the iron age hill fort the bronze age hill fort and then they all just started laughing because it is literally 30 meters away from the school all you have to do is cross the road and it is now just a field because it's been several thousand years yeah right so there's a brand there's a bronze age hill fort several thousand years after this is built also in norton fitzwarren Hilly Park, Ostorius, the Roman general, second governor of Roman Britain under Claudius, arrives in Somerset. And there is a huge battle where he kills, according to one source, hundreds of Britons and piles them all up in a pile in the Bronze Age hill fort. Thusly, the meat dragon forms from the pile of corpses.

the meat dragon forms from the pile of corpses. That's how you make a meat dragon? That's how you make a meat dragon. You kill several hundred people, pile them up on top of a hill, and then over time forms a meat dragon. Like a grill steak, but a dragon. It's kind of like a hot pot of people in the shape of a dragon. It's like a turducken of vengeance. It's an angry sausage.

I don't know if I want to be part of a podcast that has the phrase angry sausage. So I looked into it. Ostorius did go to the area. There are logs of him fighting battles in Gloucestershire, which isn't far away. He was also a pretty big deal. He won a battle against the Iceni of Boudicca fame, killed a guy I'd never heard of, but had his own Wikipedia page, so that's

probably something. Then the story jumps forward 1,300 years. Wait, what? The meat dragon lived for 1,300 years? I, what? The meat dragon lived for 1,300 years? I guess it takes a while. Yeah, dormant, waiting, congealing.

Four out of six of your comic panels must have been about that. No, the meat dragon wasn't just waiting. It was being a problem for 1,300 years. For 1,300 years? And it's only got six internet pages. And from the sounds of it, none of them are on Wikipedia. No, no. So how long would you say this meat drain's been a problem then?

About 1,300 years. About 1,300? Yeah. Well, how long's it been since all those bodies got sort of mashed up together and formed into a dragon? Meat dragon? Yeah, meat dragon. Well, there's your problem.

You've piled up all the bodies on that hill. Did it continue to absorb bodies? Like, if you didn't bury a person, did it add itself to the meat dragon? Or once formed, was it set? This piece of information wasn't in one of the two alternating paragraphs I could find. I think we have to assume yes.

It wasn't covered in the comic adaptation. Of my comic adaptation? Yeah. In the appendix. So whatever you do in the event of a meat dragon attack, don't fling lumps of flesh at it, because they'll just make it stronger. It's just going to absorb them.

It's very clever, because it means everybody you kill as a meat dragon becomes fuel to your meaty dragon fire. That is true of most predators, though. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, most carnivores. Yeah, good point. Bit of science came in there for a second. Yeah, very good point.

Pretty much how everything works. Yeah. So 1,300 years later, there's a guy called Falk Fitzwarren, who is an English noble. called Falk Fitzwarren, who is an English noble. And the story goes, panel four, that he fights and kills this dragon. And they name the town after him, North Town Fitzwarren. Then what happens, and this is where I think his story starts to fall down, even though he's killed a dragon, he's such a problem that King john still exiles him it doesn't say in any of the sources why they were doing this but this guy through my research because he does have a

wikipedia page which if you search the word dragon there is no mention of dragons on it yeah read his wikipedia page and he seems so cantankerous that there is um there is a section called last controversies so last controversies wow whoa that's a whole new level one of his last controversies was that he filed a suit against someone like a lawsuit because of a land dispute that their grandfathers had with each other oh that's just's just petty, isn't it? Like, once you've killed a dragon, why are you fannying about with legal disputes over a garden fence? Did it have wings? Meat dragons.

Yeah, meat dragons. I guess it depends what they've... I guess if you killed 100 birds and piled them up... Oh, it takes on some of the properties of the people that it... I think this is speculation. It feels like a military area of speculation. Sorry to once again play dragon lawyer, but I... Objection.

When the dragon died, did it revert back into being a pile of people? Or if you piled up a pile of dragons, could a meat person develop? What's the cyclical nature of the meat dragon situation? Yeah, what if you squished together a load of meat dragons? Would it be an uber dragon? Or would it be? Meat dragon squares. Yeah.

You never know what creature's going to appear. Just a meat armadillo, you know? It could be anything. It could be anything, yeah. Absolutely smash up Tokyo, whatever it was. It was really racist. I meant because it would be like Godzilla, not that I think it would have anything against Japanese people.

Perhaps that wasn't clear. Would 1300s era Norton Fitzwarren average person have heard of Japan? I feel like Norton Fitzwarren heard about Japan in my lifetime. They'd probably just be livid against the people of Staple Grove, which is the next door village. village like i i'm not saying they'd have been like peace and harmony to all men but i think it would have been a much closer form of xenophobia than maybe japan i think we were thinking too big we should scale it in they they'd just been furious about the guy looking at them that they didn't recognize we do love a rivalry in norton fitzwarren a village of 3 000 people we've got two rivals staple grove that I think we're angry at

and then Cotford St Luke, which I think we looked down on. Oh, Cotford St Luke. What? What have they done now? The traffic's never been the same since they installed Cotford St Luke. Oh, is it a new town? It is a pretty new town. There was some stuff there, but it was very minimal and then overnight just went ballistic, didn't it, Ron?

Well, the story goes with cockford st luke that there was um there was an asylum there that they then did up into flats but they run out of money halfway through so you had like some people living in flats and then literally like through a wall there'd be like a padded cell with like manacles and stuff wow i thought you were going to say the story goes with Cockford St. What was it? Cockford St. Luke. The story goes with Cockford St. Luke that they just got a load of villages

and squished them all together. 1300 years later, still there. The rivalry with Staplegrove is the stupid one because there's not even really a definitive edge between the two villages anymore. It's just one big super village. Oh, no, it has begun. Oh, a meat village. Yeah.

You wait for the dragon uprising of Somerset. It's going to have its renaissance any day now. There's going to be two buses a week instead of one. So is that the last of the dragon then? That's the last of that dragon. That dragon? Oh, hello, Kerr-Fall. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Well, Falk Fitzwarren, you know, he probably was squabbling with the king over some minor disputes. He gets exiled. He goes to North Africa and then pulls the exact same thing again, and rescues a princess from a completely unrelated dragon of unspecified meatness. Wow. I'm starting to think that dragon might just be the thing he

pulls out of his pocket when he needs to ingratiate himself somewhere. Oh what you think he's got like a pet dragon? Yeah you know like in um what's that film with the man and the voice is Sean Connery? Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. Dragonheart.

Oh, yeah, that's more likely. You know where Sean Connery's the dragon and then it's... Oh, where Sean Connery's a dragon, yes. I don't think I've seen it. Oh, well, basically in that there's a dragon and then he teaches the dragon to pretend to die on command. And then he uses it to raise money for himself by like oh i'll save you from this terrorizing dragon it's kind of like um color of money kind of it's a grift yeah yeah it's like paper moon but instead of a child it's a

dragon is the dragon any good at pool um it doesn't come up i know we're all expecting some exciting end to the story of Falk Fitzwarren, but actually what happens is he names his son Falk Fitzwarren Jr. Or Falk Fitzwarren III, actually, because his dad is also called Falk Fitzwarren. And then the history books get confused about which one they're talking about. So no one actually knows when he died or what happened, because it could have happened to either his dad or his son. Oh, that happens so often.

Something of a meat fault, it's one of history. He's been squished together in a history book. It's a terrific story as well as a completely new cryptid. Nobody, I mean literally nobody has ever heard of before. Nobody other than two people as far as we know has ever heard of before nobody other than two people as far as we know has ever heard of a meat dragon how like ron how have you gotten through your life with this knowledge of the meat dragon but not have you been like every time you've watched like a you know, an X-Files or Stories of the Unexplained, have you always thought, one day they're going to do the meat dragon?

Really do it justice. I'm a fan of Lawmen, been listening for a long time. I've been waiting for you guys. I mean, we're now. When are they going to cover the meat dragon? He had to start a podcast just to get himself invited onto Lawmen to bring the meat dragon out into the public sphere. What a long game.

Yeah, we can put Lex Education to bed now. We don't need it anymore. Mission accomplished, Ron. It was just a hustle, like Sean Connery in the film Dragonheart pretending to die. Yes. The biggest trick Ron ever pulled was convincing us that if you squished enough

bodies together you'd get a meat dragon wow that must have been harrowing as the dragon to know that's what you were born from like what a trauma to carry around with you your entire life that's a very good point well apparently in my reading for this apparently it was quite a common medieval belief that you'd get spontaneous life from dead bodies and stuff because people had seen like maggots and flies and stuff come from corpses all the time so the logic i think with them was well if like flies will come out of one person think what would come out of imagine whole pile of them. Imagine what we could achieve with a thousand of these. And it only took us a couple of hundred years

to find out that the answer was lots of flies. Imagine looking at a fly coming out of a body and thinking, well, we've got to magnify this somehow. It's a good start, but I think we can do better. Shall we do some scores then, Alistair? Well, that was a disgusting story. Just really horrible. So thank you very much, Laura and Ron.

You are so welcome. Just nice to not be alone anymore. That's what the body said. I'm eager to dole out some scores. I can't wait to let you know what I thought of this story. So are you ready with some categories for me? Yeah, I think we should get naming out the way first because I think it's going to be our weakest.

Well, Meat Dragon is a strong name. Meat Dragon's a lovely name. It's a real Ron Seal of a name. Yay! What is it? A meat dragon. How do you make it's a real Ron Seal of a name. Yeah. What is it? A meat dragon. How do you make it meat? What does it do?

Dragons. I don't know. I think I might be uncomfortable with calling corpses meat. It's got a post-apocalyptic vibe to it that I don't know if I like. We've got some lovely village names that James slipped in. Yeah. I don't think I didn't spot that. Crocombe. Withyombe, Netherstowie.

Very good. Yes. We've got some Roman names. Ostorius, Claudius, Iceni, Boudica. Boudica. What about Stogumba? Stogumba? Oh, I used to have a friend called Tom that lived in Stogumba.

And I liked him because his bus back from school took slightly longer than mine. And I didn't feel like the person that lived the furthest from school. That's a sad story about growing up. That's really sad, yeah. You're like one of those vulnerable people who might be talked into joining a meat dragon. I'd be first in the queue as long as I could be in the middle of the dragon So it's like a constant cuddle That's the worst bit

You don't get any of the views You want to be on the edge, I would have thought Of the meat dragon No, no, no, you want to be in the middle where it's warm In the cosy warmth Appendages can be lost Imagine dying in a big pile of all of your mates And family members and then you become a

dragon you think that's all right and then he stubs his toe and it falls off and you just float to the floor awful that's really put a human face all over this meat sort of smeared it well stagumba i think stagumba has knocked it up to a three i think it's a strong three do we want to move on to supernaturally let's go hit him with it yeah is that the next category you didn't say with a lot of confidence is that because as a scientist ron you think that the meat dragon can be explained rationally well yeah it's definitely got rashes in it oh lovely ah it's the pun that just keeps on giving.

That's the thing about the Rashomon pun. Everyone's got a different version of it. So, are you telling me that you think that this thing is magic? Or is it, in fact, science? Don't fall for it, Ron. He's luring you in. I'd say it's magical science. Magical science?

Because you're not going to look at a meat dragon and not think, gosh, this is magical, are you? I don't think I would think this is magical. This is horrifying and it smells. I think we've proved how magic the meat dragon is because of all of our ponderings on it. The sort of philosophy of a meat dragon, what happens if you smush hundreds of meat dragons together? That sort of, you know, whimsy and pondering, I think, is something that is unscientific in its core. Yeah, we were like the Thomas Aquinas of thinking about meat dragons. Yeah, Thomas Aquinas is a man.

I think Thomas Aquinas was a man made of lots of horses squashed together. He was a mate horse. That's the sequel to War Horse. It is horrible. And it smells. You didn't take the, but I was hoping, Ron, that I could appeal to your scientific benton,

that you would come up with some kind of scientific explanation for the meat dragon and therefore denude it of its supernatural qualities. But you didn't. So it's five out of five for supernatural. How could a big pile of meat become a dragon? It literally could not happen. My love for science has been dwarfed by my desire to win the podcast. And your love for meat dragon.

And my love for meat dragons. God, it's gearing up now for there to be a meat dragon-themed restaurant opening in the Taunton area, isn't it? I think I can see how this is. It's sort of like a sushi train thing. A what now? You know, like a sushi train restaurant. You know when you see like the sushi and it goes on the little conveyor belt around, like a to-yo sushi.

Is that how you say sushi? He's pronouncing sushi correctly, Laura, and he's confusing you because you're from Somerset. I'm learning so much. I'm supposed to say sushi. I can't say that in front of people. Sushi. If those people are Japanese, you can. I think we've answered the question about whether the people of Netherlands are biased against Japan.

Sushi. This has blown my mind. Okay. Sorry. I'll translate. Sushi. No, no, no. You be right right in you be right i just need to sit here and have a moment it's exactly between the names of two of the characters from sooty yeah

so and so no it's not it's sushi and sweet i'm confused sushi it's just it's not about puppets at all. Raw puppet on a little platter. Under a little see-through salver. Carry on, James. Speaking of carrying on, carry on. My pitch for the Meat Dragon restaurant would be, you know those sort of airplanes on a string toy airplanes on a string where you like wind them up and then they sort of buzz around in a circle yeah it'll be that but a meat dragon and then everyone has like a uh a potato peeler

and they just hold it up as it goes by. And that's how they get. This is the meat dragon restaurant pitch. Like a meat piñata? Yeah, kind of like a meat piñata crossed with a moving. And I mean that in both senses of the word. Moving kebab. The kebab that fights back. Is that your idea? Third category.

Yeah. I think I've got a plan. Let's go third category, meat dragon. All right, that's quite broad. Specifically, the meat dragon. Because to be honest, I don't think we're going to get to use this category ever again. No, fair enough.

I mean, yeah, it's quite a broad category, but I'm sort of annoyed because it's definitely five out of five for Meat Dragon. If you were to plot the frequency of Meat Dragon in this podcast over time, there will be an enormous spike on this episode before it drops back to the baseline of zero references. I don't know if I can. Like Ron, I think I've been infected by the idea of the Meat Dragon. I think you have to go five for the meat dragon because you cannot look a gift meat dragon in its many, many mouths. Its screaming mouth.

I've never before been frightened into doing this call, but yeah, it's five. It is five. Which is the number of noses I can see on it at the moment. And the idea that Laura's just in the middle, content. So snug. Snug as a bug in a meat dragon. Well, that was disgusting.

So what final category could possibly top that? Well, if I cottoned on to what your plan was, James, it's been kind of foiled. Yeah, it's backfired. And therefore, he has kind of... You do listen to the podcast. Undermined it anyway. Nice. Carry on, carry on. We're kept agreed number four

is undermining. Ah. So, you were hoping that I was going to give you a low score and therefore undermine you. Yes. But I didn't do that. Which undermined our plan. Which undermined the plan.

Yeah. Checkmate. Wow. Wow. Oh. Ron, you are not a normal brother. You are a cunning brother. He has been undermined every step of the way. You're a normal brother. You are a cunning brother. He has been undermined every step of the way.

You're welcome. Ironically, by his own flesh and blood. It's because he won't let me get snug in the middle of it. All I want to do is curl up contentedly in Ron's tummy and go to sleep. No, you're right. You've brilliantly and paradoxically cornered me i have no choice but to give you five out of five for undermining before before we get into i've just i i was sent some supporting details a website in fact the website i'm guessing ron it's called black drago.com yeah that's and it's called dragons i trust somebody who can't

spell the word dragon when registering an oh and it's um the page is dragons of fame the uh the dragon of north norton fitzwarren and um i'll just sort of i mean it tells the story pretty much as ron's told it there. It's got three footnotes, only two of which are hyperlinked. One of them links to somersetgateway.com forward slash mysteries. And that's still loading. And I clicked that when we started this podcast. So I'm a little bit worried I've got a virus.

And then the third one is the British Dragon Gazetteer. Gazetteer? Gazetteer. Gazetteer. Gazetteer. Like that. It's Australian. For gazes. Gazers. Gazetteer. Anyway, that loaded very quickly

with a 404 page not found and the website address is foolishpeople.com. I think it's just government denies knowledge. You referenced X-Files earlier. Someone's keeping the meat dragon under wraps. Have you got a picture in your office of a blurry meat dragon and the words, I want to believe? You can't see it because of all of the red string connecting pins. Well, this has been a revolting delight.

Would you like to plug your podcast? Is it as horrible as this? There's a tad less meat, but a lot more undermining yeah our podcast is lex education ron is trying to teach me gcse science so we are working our way through the curriculum one argument at a time but do join us weekly every monday for the next lesson soon to be the christmas episodes oh yeah very excited about that doing the science of reindeer flight what no you should just be wheeling out a big telly and putting on the lion king well funny you should say that mr abk because we actually did do

the science of home alone um we went through a lot of Kevin's defences against the wet bandits. What? Is that what they're called? Is that what the bandits are called? They're called the wet bandits. That's what they want to be called, isn't it? Yeah. Well, because they leave the taps on everywhere they go.

And then the policeman at the end is like, good idea, leaving the taps on. Now we know exactly which burglaries to pin on you. And then in Home Alone 2, they come back as the sticky bandits because he covers his hand in sellotape and sticks it in the loose change bucket. I had no idea. That is a ridiculous name for a gang. Joe Pesci isn't sold on it. Yeah, the whole thing was filmed in a swimming pool

so that they could do those scenes. Really? Yeah. Yeah, there's a really good show. Is it the movies that made us on Netflix? And they kind of do the making of all these films. And yeah, the set for Home Alone

was inside an empty swimming pool. Well, thank you for plugging Home Alone, Laura. So if you're listening, go out and watch this Home Alone. It sounds cracking.

I dread to think what the acoustics were like in a swimming pool. So I imagine it sounds awful. A lot of post-sync, I imagine.

It's a very big sync. Lovely. Lovely stuff. We could end as we started on a wonderful pun. However, I've got some bad news. Alistair, I think we're in a real Colin situation here. From the Ghosts in the Window episode. Yeah, really?

Yes, really. I don't think they would mind us using that information without crediting them, James. Really? Do you think that's an FAQ? So, I've been digging a little bit further into that website of blackdrago.com. We do need to cite this as a source kylie drago mccormick kylie mccormick also known as drago really wants their website cited if we use any research from it so that is blackdrago.com and that's on the internet oh the internet i've got a feeling ron you know when

they do ordnance survey maps yeah and and they put like a pretend street on there yeah to check if you've copied it you think this is a pretend legend i think but somehow it's tallied up with your own year six comic booking. Do you still have the panels? I think if I was to go back to my parents' place in Somerset, I might be able to dig it out in the attic. I think you want to go to Kylie Drago McCormick and say, I think you need to cite your source, mate. I've somehow melded brains with you as a child.

Yes. Because the website does look like it was created when I was about seven years old. But yeah, thank you very much, Kylie Drago McCormick. There's some excellent dragon information on there. If you want more dragon information, do check it out. So check out Lex Education with Laura Lex and Brother Ron.

Brother Ron. I probably can't use the singing, the Gregorian chant over the music. That's going to sound horrible. Yeah, and also we don't want to get sued by their monks. Yeah, those Gregorians. So litigious. We don't want to get sued by Greg or Ian.

And don't tell them, but we've been using their calendar for some time. There is a whole wealth of extras from this episode, which will be going out on the special bonus feed, which you can get access to by joining us. Join us. At patreon.com forward slash lawmen pod. Join us. That's not part of the URL.

The join us is implied. Yeah, that's more like a sort of a haunting sound that you hear. I feel like Christmas pigs become a little over-commercialised. Yeah, it has. And it's... I feel like the soul of the Christmas pig has kind of gone from it. I don't think people know the true meaning of Christmas pig. Including me.

It's the feeling you get in your heart when you wish a stranger Christmas pig. Just do that, listener. Just go out and say Christmas pig to a stranger. Next time someone wishes you Merry Christmas, just smile and say Christmas pig. And a Christmas pig to you too, Christmas pig. Christmas pig. And a Christmas pig to you too. You pig.

That'll get you reported to HR at the very least.