Loremen Podcast - S4 Ep32: Loremen - S4 Ep32 - Denizens of Another World

Episode Date: February 9, 2023

A manuscript found in a secret drawer sends the Loremen down an especially curious rabbit hole; James relates a close encounter between a Victorian carpenter and multifaceted entities from outer space. (One of which turns out to be a total bore.)   It's the kind of outlandish tale that a cynic might call "obviously fake," but once a legend gets started, it's harder to stop than an armoured fox. For the completist - here is the full livestream... https://youtube.com/live/yhUHEGst9WE 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.twitch.tv/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 am Alistair Beckett-King, recording from the bottom of a well, because I am on a little tour, trying to sell my book to kids, James. From the bottom of a well, because I am on a little tour trying to sell my book to kids, James. From the bottom of a well, that sounds like... I say, come hither, children, and they are reticent. At least you're keeping Lassie in business. ABK's at the bottom of a well.

And he's luring kids down there. In the meantime, why not relive the live stream that we did the other day? Great idea. This is the edited version. The live stream that we did the other day. Great idea. This is the edited version. I'm saying it's live stream because we mentioned the chat a few times and we steal jokes from that chat a few times.

And please enjoy The Denizens of Another World. I want to talk to you about a book that has come to my attention entitled An Account of a meeting with denizens of another world by william robert loosely edited and with commentary by david langford i've got an old old copy from 1979 which is when it was published i want to read you some of the other books that are advertised on the back. War in 2080. The Future of Military Technology. It looks at the trends of current military technology and scientific progress

and extrapolates them into the future. I'd love to know if that was correct. But only got to wait 50 years. That is 216 by 138 millimetres, that book. That's the size of the book. Yeah, all of the books listed on the back, it tells you the size for some reason, which is good to know. Okay, I mean, yeah, I guess.

I guess you need to know how big a book is if you know it's going to fit on the shelf. But I would have thought just knowing if it was book-sized, vaguely book-sized would be enough. This is not page count. We haven't got a page count on here. We haven't got any idea of depth. No, it's just height and width.

Width? Breadth. Breadth. Another one is Into Thin Air, People Who Disappear. Brilliant. Covers famous cases such as that of the Bermuda Triangle and Mary Celeste. They're shown to be rather less mysterious than they might first have seemed to be. But there are other instances where the application of logic and historical research fails to provide an explanation. Intriguing.

Another book, The Road to the to the stars again 247 by 169 thanks thanks i was about to ask that's the biggest book on the list but in the not too distant future man survival may depend on his ability to travel among the stars yeah you make a mistake writing a book about the not too distant future you want to choose something like 2080 where it's pretty much guaranteed you'll be dead yes by the time anyone can go oh we don't have robots that carry us about on the battlefield you're dead you don't care oh this is illustrated with color pre-constructions by andrew farmer with color pre-constructions pre-constructions it's like a reconstruction but before first i don't know if anybody enacts a crime before it

happens that's deeply suspicious. That's just a practice run. That's from the TV show Crime Starters. And the final book, it comes across quite aggressive. Extraterrestrial Encounter, described as one of the few books on extraterrestrial encounter that actually has anything new to contribute. Whoa.

Yeah, I mean, I was about to say, when I try and sell a book, I am trying to sell a book, but you'll notice I didn't sell it by saying, all other books are awful. Please buy the one good book that there is. Mine. This book has a welter of new ideas

and radical speculation, together with its pointing out of flaws in previous strategies and predictions. It's almost written in Garth Marenghi's voice, as is. Yes, very much so. 216 by 138. Oh, nice, nice. Good size, actually.

Standard book size, standard. Good size, yeah. Yeah, great size for a book. Of all those people, the person who seems like the worst to sort of get trapped in the corner of a pub with, I think, will be the last one. Yes. War of the future guy sounds like a right laugh war of the future guy is the guy that edited and commentated upon william robert loosely's account of a meeting

with denizens of another world 1871 i'm excited about this because they're denizens yes it's like citizens but manky yeah but in a den yeah what is the definition of denizen it's just like horrible people of a particular place it could be a nice den it could be like a a den that you make out of sofa cushions it never is though is it no you're thinking of more like a foxes or badgers it's always some kind of mose eisley opium den type of location yeah a den of iniquity so william robert loosely getting to the subject in hand billy bob loosely william robert loosely 1838 to 1893 carpenter joiner undertaker oh triple threat that is the Victorian triple threat. Well, he lived on the outskirts of High Wycombe. His shop was on Oxford Road of High Wycombe.

It was pretty big. He, listeners of the Minnesota will remember, he worked on the renovations of Benjamin Disraeli's nearby manor. Of course. Of course. Was he carpeting, joining or undertaking? I think he was doing a combination of the first two. Right, good.

Hopefully. But good to know that he could slip into the third in case of an accident. Yeah, yeah. Is there an undertaker in the house? He was clearly a very skilled carpenter. And there was an interesting example of his skill, which was still in his family's possession in the late 1970s, which was a very fancy desk and it had well it's described

as having all sorts of fold-away sections there was like a pop-up drawing board thing there was a lid that would slide back and there'd be like loads of pigeon holes in it this is a classic murder mystery desk oh yeah all secret puzzle box elements that you can't see because of the wood carving and inside that magical magician's desk there was of course a secret drawer yes hopefully this skill was kept to the drawers and he didn't bring that over into the undertaker side of things with like a secret second coffin in the in the coffin a little little pop-up pirate of a coffin. No, I wouldn't like that at all. And inside that secret drawer in the 1970s,

his great-great-granddaughter found a manuscript, the account of meeting with denizens of another world. Wow. Am I being Johnny Skeptic by saying I don't believe that she found the document in the 70s in the secret drawer and that maybe it was a lie? Well, well, I never. I mean, I don't know anything about it yet,

but it just sounds like the kind of thing that would be a lie. Why don't you listen with an open mind? Okay. All right. Now, I need to workshop a voice here very briefly. I need the voice of that guy. I need William Robert Loosley's voice. Well, what do we know about him?

He's a joiner, a carpenter, and an undertaker. And undertaker. So there's gravity there. So, yes. Kind of like your normal voice, to be honest. It needs a little summit-summit to differentiate when I'm talking and when he's talking. Yeah, and you don't

want to be Darth Vader-ing all the way through this. Oh, God, no. What's your Victorian man voice? Let me have a listen. What do you mean? I said I've got a thousand voices and I'm a man of a million voices. It's just a lot of them... A lot of them sound like the same posh man from the olden days. Yes. It is my intention... This is how it opens,

by the way. This is how the account opened. It is my intention to record the curious and marvellous happenings of a few days past while the memory is still vividly with me. A little longer and I shall surely begin to forget. So that's how he opens. Okay. I'm not gripped yet, but

go on. It's hard to write a book, you know. I wouldn't want to judge a fellow author. He was suffering from a bit of a fever and he was unable to sleep. So he went outside to cool down and he looked in the sky and he saw a light moving in the sky, slowly moving, like a shooting star, not really shooting, more just sort of trundling star. Nowadays, you'd look at it and think, I wonder if that's the ISS.

Yeah, yeah. But in those days, they didn't have an ISS. They didn't have an ISS. They didn't have one. Each country had their own space station back then. Yeah, and they were all on the ground. They were on the ground, yeah. They were ready, ready for space.

I say, close that door. Don't you know it's space out there? That's what you have to do if you're in a Victorian airlock. Put the latch on, boy. Opening the Victorian airlock to knock your pipe ash out the window and then closing the airlock. It's terribly cold out there in space. Carry on, James.

And he saw it and he heard a thunderous noise. And then, all of a sudden, the light stopped. So sudden was the arresting of its motion that my eye went on perforce to find the shadowed bulk of the hill where, a moment before, it seemed the thing must plunge in ruin. But no, it hung poised among the low northerly stars as though hoping to conceal itself in stillness, though outshining half the sky this

sounds like olden days writing i know i was being skeptical a minute ago but that really sounds like the needless verbosity of a victorian carpenter joiner and undertaker yes it's the voice as well i'm selling it to you i think yeah yeah yeah it's part of the voice i was about to act like a sensible fellow by returning to my bed when that imbecile light moved yet again. Not this time with any steady purpose of descent, but in a wandering, questing fashion. And then he goes on to be sexist.

I'm just going to skip over that. What is it? It's like, it looks like a bird's driving that. Basically. Is that what he says? Yes. In a wandering, questing fashion, like my lady customers who move from one fine chair to another,

forever undecided of their wants. You know how men choose chairs and how women choose chairs. Lower and lower it sank in its aimless drift and a new thrill of fear and wonder touched me when it came to the dim outline of the hill for not vanishing respectably behind this familiar horizon the light was plainly in front of the hill between myself and the hillside so right it started floating he's realizing it's not in the sky well it's in the sky it's not in you know the vastness of space it's

between him and the hill it's quite nearby yeah it's nearby and he sees it go down amongst the little copse of trees i don't is that autology is it copped by it's anyway a bunch of trees i think you can say copse of trees yeah a copse is made it can't be made of anything other than trees bunch of trees and then snuffed out like a candle it is gone and the night is like any save for mr loosely gaping and all a shiver so he goes back inside and he goes to bed oh that's it he just he's off yeah so far so dream yep fair enough yeah the next morning he's like i don't know if anyone else saw this. So he sort of subtly asks his wife, like, did you hear any thunder stuff last night?

And she's like, no, slept through. She says, no, I was up all night picking chairs. I was thinking about chairs. Which one to buy? He started asking the random people that came in his shop. But everyone was asleep and their sleep was untroubled he spoke to one guy who's quite the character one gouty old fellow had not had a wink sir and slept always with the window open and no sir he not heard a sound so no corroboration from the

gouty the goutiest of gentlemen i mean yeah it really sounds like a dream so he decided i'm gonna go and see what happened up there on that hill like a dream so he decided i'm gonna go and see what happened up there on that hill i know where those trees are i'm gonna go there puts his boots on gets his stick he goes out for a walk and he's poking around the area there's no scorching on the grass as you might expect from some sort of flaming thing coming down to the ground he's poking around there's nothing there Ahem. Then came the discovery, without which I should never have set pen to paper this day, though in the first instant I thought little of what I now saw, which was no more than a movement in the low, bushy growths

nearby. Bushes. Yes. Bushes to you and me, James. Bushy growths. Low, bushy growths. What were they? Small bushes. Some manner manner of bush I would say reader what does a stirring in the undergrowth signify to you alright saucy

a bird hopping to or from its hidden nest a fox or badger creeping furtively from its earth I was curious still I peered close

saw only a shifting of leaves which rustled incontinently I thrust my stick into the foliage, thinking that perhaps this animal might be goaded into showing itself. Imagine my astonishment when the steel ferrule struck.

Was it stone? No, metal. Some improvident farmer then had tossed out an old plough rather than have it mended. But again, no. This guy's internal monologue is just a rollercoaster of, and then I saw an alien. Oh no, probably just a badger wearing shoes.

Oh. But I poked it with my stick and it was definitely an alien. No, probably just a horseshoe. Have you already read this? Because I do confess to one wild thought of an armour-clad fox. An armour-clad fox. I think it just sinned labyrinth it is no easy matter to describe what i saw a thing at whose sight a fresh access of awe and

wonder held me rooted to the spot the first likeness which sprang to my mind was an engraving of Plato's perfect solids. There, or should I look this word up? The, hmm, the icosahedron or 20 face, it's basically a D20. Yes. Okay. Yeah. I don't know how to pronounce icosahedron either. So let's just say that. We'll just say D20.

D20. The skulker in the leaves then resembled a D20. 20 sided dice, by way in case in case anybody listening isn't a nerd we don't need that translation just in case it resembled an icosahedron all of glittering metal about 18 inches in height and it was covered in mud just sort of whizzing around in this sort of wood floor it was moving it was moving around it was moving around sorry i missed that oh yeah it rocked on its base and it sort of tilted floor. It was moving. It was moving around. It was moving around. Sorry, I missed that. Oh, yeah. It rocked on its base

and it sort of tilted up towards him and he leant down to look at it and a little sort of metal hatch opened up. I always get my face near to mysterious artifacts. First thing I do, when I'm wandering in the zone and I see something unexplained, I just get right in there with my face.

You sort of bash it with a stick. Oh, yeah, I give it a good old whack. Could be an armour-clad fox. Could be an armour-clad fox, and you need to show them who's boss. Exactly. Sorry, James, in the countryside, that's how we do things. Sometimes you've just got to really hit a fox. It could have armour on.

Yeah, oh, you think our farmers should be checking for armour first and then striking, but then the armour-clad fox has got the farmer by the neck. Another dead farmer, and that's on your conscience, James. That is true, that is true that is true um so yeah this little thing had a little hatch popped up it was like a little glass lens and he like peeked into it and then another little hatch opened up another little glass lens peeked into that boom flash a bright purplish flash poof poof flash flash flash three flashes he's rocked back on his heels, blinded. And then it advanced on him with a rod poking out of it, coming towards him.

So he ran away. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fair enough. And then after a little bit, he finally gets his bravery back. And he goes looking again. And he sees it. It's just sort of pootling around. It's picked up a little dead body of a rat or some little sort of creature with one rod.

And another rod comes out and it's got this, what he describes as like a thin, flexible, filmy glass that it wraps the rat up in. Another little hatch opens and it pops the rat inside its chest cavity thing. So far it's behaving like a player in an RPG video game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the first thing you do is you arrive. A rat attacks you. You kill the rat inside its chest cavity thing. So far, it's behaving like a player in an RPG video game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the first thing you do is you arrive. A rat attacks you. You kill the rat. You immediately see, was that rat carrying any cash?

Maybe a key? Anything valuable? Oh, rat meat. I'll have that. Yeah, I'll save that. That's fine. I might need it. I'm never going to do anything with the rat meat.

It's probably poisoned, but I'll take it. It's the start of an RPG. Just because it was the first thing that I collected. I'm going to keep that till the collected i'm gonna at least keep it until i get to the inn and then maybe sell it it's so got any rat meat on us that's the innkeeper that was the one one gold piece so he sees it pottering around and then he realized he's got his he's got his stick that's my stick and an englishman's rod is his stick, as they say. That's my armour-clad fox poking stick. If an armour-clad fox were to accost him on the way home.

Defenseless. So he follows it. And then it goes to a bigger version of itself, like another big D20. And it gives the stick to it. And that puts the stick in its thing. And he's like, that's my stick pack. It's got my stick.

And he realised they've spotted him and he starts to try and get away. But then the little one like herds him, herds him round like a sheep dog over to the bigger one. And he gets over to the big one and what suddenly confronted me, born like a spirit from thin air before my eyes, was a man.

A man, moreover, who seemed not a little insubstantial, close to translucent. But this man's face was not unfamiliar. He was dressed like myself in good plain clothes, blah blah blah blah blah. This man was undeniably myself myself oh i'm not ashamed to record that i clutched urgently at my waistcoat to make sure that he was not naked to check that he was actually real i think oh i see and now the image changed in an eye blink it shifted now the semblance of myself was dazed, not fearful, but seemingly stunned. Briefly wondered whether this was a glimpse of some horrid future. But again, the figure suddenly changed, so that the third presentiment showed this same loosely,

but now with his hand before his eyes, so that his countenance was hidden. It was an image of him. And then the image of himself disappears and then is replaced by an orb, and it shows a bunch of weird patterns. Classic. Your classic orb. Classic orb situation. He doesn't really understand what's going on.

There seems to be some sort of logic to these images within this orb. And this is a guy from 1871. Like, they haven't got telly or anything. So this is pretty out there stuff he's never seen any basic special effects you're right so this is all new to him yeah and after a while uh he describes this feeling that something was expected of me i shrugged my shoulders bowed to the larger engine or rather to its occupants and said aloud sirs your conjurer's show is all mystery to me there ensued another pause the whole affair recalling my comical

conversations with a monsieur who i have no doubt said his say lucidly and an ingenious variety of ways though in french always struggle as he might his meaning remained obscure with a monsieur monsieur so he's basically saying it's a bit like talking to a frenchman oh right so um uh in the in the commentary david langford sort of extrapolates what some of these things might have been so it showed a bunch of numbers like a series of four lights six eight twelve twenty which all refer back to these platonic solids those basically your classic dice dices yeah cubes a torus is a torus platonic solid uh maybe sphere is a sphere one no no no No? It's got no sides? No. Has it got one side? I think it should be,

but I think Plato probably knew better than me on this one. Okay. All right. It's something along the lines of a shape that is... All the sides are the same shape, the same size, basically, and you could only make four six eight twelve and twenty sided things in that manner basically okay all right david also um postulates that the images shown to him the three images were the three images of himself and this alien was trying to work out if he could recognize himself kind of thing and when he did it was

like okay we're going to try and communicate. Gave him loads of maths, basically. They were mathematically significant numbers. Something about a Pascal triangle, a Fibonacci sequence. These all sound like delicious puddings. A representation of the solar system. It tries to sort of show him that he's planet number three

in this representation of the solar system. And all these images, other things like represent atoms that sort of correspond to schrodinger's wave equation which wouldn't be formulated for another 50 years if they'd showed him a woodwork based thing he would have been all over it yeah if he just they're just on a diagram of the difference between being a carpenter and being a joiner. You know the things on, like, The Pioneer and The Voyager? Yeah. Spacecraft. A couple of naked people.

The embarrassed guy going, Hi, I've forgotten my trousers. And then just some Wagner, probably, and an Elvis track or something. I don't know what's on there. Well, on Voyager, it's got Johnny B. Goode. It's got Johnny B. Goode. It has. just to sort of

suggest that the human race generally tries to achieve virtuous behavior goodness we're good we're good or at least or at least johnny was exalted to be good yeah and hopefully underneath there's a little plaque that says maybe you extraterrestrials aren't ready for that yet but your kids are gonna love it it's also got a song by blind willie johnson blind willie johnson yeah the blue singer yeah i don't know about the existence of a blind willie johnson is he one-eyed willie's less fortunate brother there are multiple blind willies what's which blind willie johnson song is it i don't know i'm afraid but in the land of blind willies the one-eyed willie is king that's a goonies reference there that's a two-finger yes there you've got good

so that's and that's as sort of commentary says that he was maybe being attempted to be communicated with by these aliens in a way that he would just not be able to understand he says what does he say? There's a really good quote. So he sees all this stuff and he just gets bored. Like seeing a floating sphere in front of him that's given all these light shows in front of him. One of the quote is,

then to my dismay, a new show began. To be honest, it put me in mind of when I went to see Avatar at the cinema like it was amazing but yeah yeah yeah then to my dismay another hour began all in all he likened the whole thing like trying to talk to a frenchman jean crappard he gave it the name he was jean he gave it a he gave it a satirical name like an annoying French man. Yes, yeah. Oh, I hope my French neighbour is always showing me equations

and platonic solids. So it's showing all these pictures, and then the last picture, an indescribably complicated tangle, was suddenly gone. And as suddenly, like one who consults his watch and straightaway begins to run, the smaller engine skimmed away. So I think... I think the alien just got bored. Yeah, because this guy's really boring.

Got to go, mate. Actually, sorry. Sorry. He'd managed to work out one bit that was like demonstrating one of the little things and the bigger thing and then the big ship that they came from. And he kind of worked out that it was meant to be coming back the next day the next night to pick up its things so he

went home went to bed and was like i'll get up in the morning and i'll go and maybe i'll go and have another chat to him but he oversleeps and uh misses it and there's a really really well described thing where he's like he like wakes up and realizes it's coming down and he's sort of at his window being like i could run but i'm pretty sure i'm not going to catch it i think we've all had that experience with buses where you're like a bit later like i could run but i'll probably just then be out of breath yeah and not on a bus yeah and if you do run then you're just getting there and you and you bus yeah and if you do run then you're just getting there and you and you still miss it then you've run and you've got the maximum possible

amount of time to wait yes exactly it's the worst of both worlds yes so that's it really and then there's a little postscript which is from about 10 years later another piece of paper was found which says psych it details that he doesn't want the story to be told until he's an old man, in case it hurts his reputation. So he's going to hide it in this drawer, which he did. And, yeah, that's that.

Incroyable, as an alien might say. Yeah. Mon Dieu, c'est l'histoire magnifique. Au revoir, mon frère. I don't know. Où est la piscine? Où est mon platonique solide?

Maintenant, j'allais aux bibliothèques. Je voudrais Euclidean space. I think that was what the alien was like. I just need my Euclidean space i think that was what the alien was i just need my euclidean space actually thanks it's a shame the alien didn't arrive in france and they would have just been like oh yeah we talk like that so bon where bon um so it's really well written uh account uh and david's uh langford's bit afterwards really sort of goes into the explanations of what these things could mean. David Langford I looked up, he's an author

he's an editor, he's a critic he's got a degree in physics from Brasenose College at Oxford he worked as a weapons physicist and now he's a science fiction writer. For the benefit

of the listener, I'm squinting my eyes. Yeah. Skeptically. Yes. Skeptical. He freely admits that this story is fictional. What? Yeah, sorry, gang.

What? The whole thing's not... Ah, I mean, I did say it right at the top, right at the start of the show. I said it was it a lie but still i'm it's oh he admits the story is fictional and notes that journalists don't usually ask there's quite a famous ufologist whitley striber who wrote communion which is meant to be based off a thing that happened to him he thinks it's true and he will not take david langford's word that he's made it up it's like become a massive part of ufology this account even though it says at the end i made it up it

doesn't actually say in the book to be fair it doesn't say in the book okay is very the closest thing it does is his little sort of write-up on the on jacket. It talks about he writes lots of sci-fi. Right, okay. It's got a very funny line at the end. His wife, Hazel, is a qualified Egyptologist who has great patience with all of this. That's good. Very nice.

That's really good. That's very nice. David Langford won 29 Hugo Awards. Or Hugo, as an alien would pronounce that. That's a sort of a sci-fi writer's thing. Yeah, it's the main award for sci-fi writing. Between 1979 and 2009, he had a 31-year streak of nominations. Wow.

And between 1989 and 2007, a 19-year streak of wins. Pretty impressive. For the best short stories, sci-fi short story. Then your dear in the chat is asking, and I think a lot of people's hearts ride on this, was the magic table with special hidden drawers also fictional or was there some truth to it? Well, as he says,

what of the great-great-granddaughter of William Robert Lucy? What happened to her? Reader, I married her. That was his wife. Ah. Was the great-great. So I think the table is real. So it's a real table.

Good. So he saw a real table and thought, I can do something with that. Yeah. Amy Muggleston is asking another very important question. Are the French real? We just don't know. No one can tell.

So that is the tale of an account of meeting with denizens of another world by William Robert Loosley, edited with commentary by David Langford and written by... Well, that's not folklore, but it was a great story. And he does a good pastiche of doddery old Victorian prose, meandering old Victorian prose that spends as much time on hypothetical fox armour as it does on an actual alien.

I would say it's a really good read if anyone is after it. I think it's out of print, so it's kind of difficult to pick up. There are, content warning, aside from that chair-based sexism, there are a couple of words used in it that might have been all right in the 70s

to give an impression of a colonial era person. Definitely not cool now. Yeah. But broadly speaking, it's not a bad little read. So then... Shall I score this? I feel there might be some backlash because this was a fiction but are you

ready to score me i'm ready to lash back yeah yeah okay lashes back okay i came in saying not true and i ended the story not true and in the middle i was like an armored fox and that's been my journey yeah i mean it was a good journey it's not a bad journey no i enjoyed it so first up names no well i like the denizens of another world the denizens a couple of d20s billy bob loosely uh yeah yeah that's okay loosely's good uh annoyingly these books whilst they've got great blurbs they've got not got good titles no no um general war business 40 years hence rubbish yeah there aren't many names in there are there really at all uh do you want to do you want to enter join a carpenter's the thing in the names category to

boost the score yes one of the names for this tale suggested by the chattergrey is join a carpenter's the thing brackets that i saw, close brackets. That's a good name. That's a good name. That's significantly better than the title of the book. To be fair, I don't think John Carpenter's The Thing had come out when the book was published. That's the only reason I can come up with.

Yeah. All right, we've got a couple of more names that I've just remembered. We've got Platonic Solids. Do me a Platonic Solid. Nice. We've got Pascal's Triangle's triangle fibonacci sequence um he refers to the frenchman as jean crappard oh yeah jean crappard yeah all right well here's what i'll do james would you like me to score these names along the fibonacci sequence if it yeah okay so

how many have we got we've got we've got Jean Crapard. That's one. William Robert. Billy Bob. That's also one, if we're on the Fibonacci sequence. So we're still on one. It's very low. Oh, oh, oh. Blind Willie Johnson.

Blind Willie Johnson. That's three. And then Joyner Carpenter's The Thing is five. Yes. Nice one, Fibonacci. Finally. Finally, your scale got you i honestly when i said let's score it using the fibonacci sequence i thought it was going to be worse than that i was very

excited by the fact that it's dealt one one and didn't realize how quickly five made an appearance okay now then hmm my second category is supernatural zero zero out of five zero stars it's a it's a it's a d zero a zero-sided dice that is the sphere i suppose in a way yeah um just a big oh oh i didn't think i would do very well on that one. In which case, that brings us to the category, the category suggested by the chat on the YouTube live stream. Good work, the chat. Thanks, the chat. It was, ooh, what's inside your drawers?

It's a very 1970s, it's an appropriately 1970s category. The book came out in the 70s. Yes. And a huge amount of humour in the 70s centred around the noise, ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh, what's in your drawers?

Which suggested something from, something in the bepanted area was occurring. Mm. And the good thing about drawers is it can refer to a drawer on a cabinet or under the pants. Yeah, there's not much in his his under part apart from he might have just been in his um long johns when he went out that first night when he was a bit hot and he wanted

to cool down hmm i assumed you had some kind of some kind of pant based stuff in order to bulk this out well first of all let's just get it out of the way. The desk. The desk. The magical desk with a secret drawer. Magic desk, secret drawers, yes. All sorts of pigeonholes. That did exist at the very least. Yep, yep, yep. That's good. The little alien, the little robot that had...

It's got several little compartments. It had compartments, yeah. It had what's probably a camera. It had a flash. It had a little compartment for dead rats yeah yeah little rat slot and then it went over to its bigger mate and it gave it a big stick to put in its big stick compartment yeah there's a stick i can't fit that in my drawer put that in yours yeah yeah that's it i think i'm afraid so that's about three examples of drawers i suppose

maybe a little cheeky secret bonus extra point. For what purpose? Hidden within that three, if I sort of pulled on the middle bit of the three. No, I don't think so. Would another little one pop out, turn it into a four? No, I don't think so. I don't think that's happening.

Darn. I think in general, I think the premise of this part of the podcast is that you give reasons and then I give numbers. I don't think you can just at the end go, but what if it were higher? Have a little bit more? Like an orphan, you can't just be like,

please, sir, I need... A bigger number. The score as big as me. Different. Different one. You, sir, you boy, what day is it? It's ABK playing hardball day. Oh.

I'm not giving you more than three for that. In which case, my final category... Mm-hmm. It is... Orson Well, I Never. I'm not giving you more than three for that. In which case, my final category, it is Orson Well I Never. Now. That's going to need an explanation. This is going to need quite a lot of explanation. Right.

So, as I mentioned, David has said in multiple places, this is a fiction. This is a story that he made up did anybody ask or is he just like at the bus stop i made it up well the reason he's saying that is because people are citing this as an victorian example of an alien interaction impossible that he could have predicted that that would have happened by publishing it as a Victorian account of a UFO encounter. But he specialises in parodies.

That's very much his thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's good at it, absolutely. He's very good at it. So people must be saying that he's now lying, that they have got to him and they are making him say. Right, that he made it up. So what I posit is that he did find it edit it comment on it and

publish it as the story goes but then they did get to him and they forced him right to become a fiction writer okay yeah he had a 31 year streak oh yeah yeah oh yeah do you think he made a deal with the devil of some kind exactly he like a 19 year winning streak yeah and this started in 1979 the year that this was published okay yeah yeah and he's now trapped in that lie unable to convince anyone that he is a liar because they'd be like well you're lying now what about if you were that means you were not lying that means you were telling the truth before it's a real paradox how does that connect to orson Welles? Well, you might remember Orson Welles did his famous radio production of War of the Worlds. Yes, I do.

Which now we're told that the reports of people believing it and panic were overstated. But what if it was real and there was an alien invasion that Orson Well Wells reported on. Dawson Wells, the director of fiction, Dawson Wells was chosen to report on. Yeah, and then he was subsequently... The head of the Mercury Theatre troupe.

We'll just get him to do it. And then they were like, well, you're going to have to become a director now. They got to him. Right, but you'll be the greatest director for a bit. Yeah, three years later, he made the greatest film ever made yes herbie it's about volkswagen with a mind of its own and you could very much argue by looking at the work and life of orson welles that you could argue that he very much fell out of love of cinema and it points it was like he was a man being forced to do it.

In 1973, there was a documentary, a faux documentary film called F for Fake. Yes, it's excellent. Is that a cry for help? It's about a docudrama about an art forger. It's really, really good. I sort of feel like of you, me and the listeners, I'm the only person who's seen that film.

It's excellent, F for fake. And what was Orson Welles' last film that he was in? It's, is it the robot one? Transformers the movie. Sorry. Transformers the movie or the robot one? Yes. Where he played Unicron,

an alien robot intelligence that is intent on attacking and devouring the earth. Has this hit a message? That was his way of telling us, with a film that he obviously had no respect for. His final line in cinema is, destiny, you cannot destroy my destiny. And then he explodes. That is how Orson Welles left cinema.

And he also left us a variety of other secret messages like, the delicious French wines of Paul Masson. The peas. wells left cinema and he also left us a variety of other secret messages like delicious french wines of paul massana the peas like what is what did he mean by that when he delivered those lines really weirdly what was he trying to tell us what tell me what you want in the depths of your ignorance i wouldn't direct an actor like this in Shakespeare. And other Orson Welles quotes. Does that sound like someone who is in love with his art and wants to do it, or someone that is being forced to by the man? Yeah, no, look, I'm not saying that Orson Welles was a happy chappy,

but I just don't know if that proves the existence of aliens. Never mind tangentially proving the existence of a different set of aliens based on a pun. Yes. Sorry, I hit the mic there with the force of my words i i'm unconvinced although i did enjoy you bringing up awesome wells i would also like to point out that because these things can get out of hand i absolutely do not believe any of that argument at all right i think that i made that up for a joke no you that's what they're making james say wing and the lawmen podcast went on to be reasonably popular coincidence

yeah all right so um what was my score for orson well i never because also it never happened i mean it's layers upon layers it It's at least five layers. To ask me for a score like this, how can you place a score on a man's life games? I don't think a man's life could ever be summed up with a single score. That's someone else. That's a different character in Citizen Kane.

It's not important. All right, it's five, but only if you, like, on your deathbed whisper that five. Oh, yes. On your deathbed and then drop a snow globe. And inside the snow globe, there's just a tiny little you and me doing a thumbs up. And all the little snowflakes are little fives. Yeah.

Yeah, all right. Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure we could do that. Easy enough. All right. Five is then five. Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure we could do that. Easy enough. All right. Five is then five. Brilliant. Thanks. We know a little place where fives are grown.

Normally at the end of the recordings when the chat aren't here, we just sort of stop talking and realise that's the end of the episode. Yeah. I forgot that there were people who... I'm pointing over here because that's where my chat is. I hope no one minds that um that it turned out to be false but um there's a lot of anger virginia dodie is asking to work in the magnificent ambersons yeah we already have by going on way too long

yeah i'm talking about the studio cut where they hacked big lumps out of it as well still a bit long and the ending is somewhat unsatisfying was it recorded down a well? I don't think anybody could have guessed that that story was fake it was a very instant it started like I did

sorry I'm just smugly pleased to have noticed that that wasn't true you say that for every story i just cut it out every other time thing was i'd i don't want to drop her in it but i've read about this story in a betty puttick betty puttick and then the afternoon before we recorded i was like i'll find out a little bit of color about the guy that edited it it It's too much research, if anything. Puttick got you, James. Puttick!

Anyway, for extra stuff, if you want to see the whole of that live stream, you can see the point where my heart breaks when Alistair says, I think this is not true within the first five minutes. So do check that out. Also, join the Patreon for bonus episodes, more stuff. And see you next week for a Valentine's special, I guess. Bye. You can buy it right now.

It comes out, technically it comes out on Wednesday, but it's in some shops. Really? You can't stop them from putting them on the shelves. Nice. But it comes out on Wednesday. No, Thursday. Thursday.

It comes out on the 2nd of February. If you ordered it on the internet, would it be with you on a Thursday? I don't know, James. Or do they bag it up? I'm not part of the distribution network. These are the new questions. What role do you think I have in the process of selling it? That question and where do you get your get crazy ideas from that's all you're

going to need to answer and well the answer the second one is i just read things out of the chat while you're talking