Oh What A Time... - #28 Nightlife (Part 1)

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

Throw on your gladrags and pop on your dancing shoes because this week we're discussing: nightlife! What was a night out like in a Roman pub? How did DJing become a thing? A once insanely popular Turkish drink which definitely isn't custard. And our bonus part for the full timers; the circus! Thank you for all your wonderful correspondence, do keep it coming in along with any episode ideas you might have at: [e-mail] This is Part One (Part Two will be out tomorrow), but if you want both parts now, why not become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER? In exchange for your £4.99 to support the show, you'll get: - the 4th part of every episode and ad-free listening - episodes a week ahead of everyone else - a bonus episode every month - And first dibs on any live show tickets Subscriptions are available via AnotherSlice, Apple and Spotify. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.com You can follow us on:  X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepod And Instagram at @ohwhatatimepod Aaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice? Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk). Chris, Elis and Tom x Get an Exclusive NordVPN deal here: https://nordvpn.com/owat  It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's stop-loss orders on Kraken. An easy way to plan ahead. Go to Kraken.com and see what crypto can be. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. See Kraken.com slash legal slash CA dash PRU dash disclaimer for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. Looking for a collaborator for your career? A strong ally to support your next level success? You will find it at York University School of Continuing Studies, where we offer career programs purpose-built for you. Visit continue.yorku.ca Hello and welcome to Oh What A Time, the history podcast that tries to decide if living in the past would be so stressful we'd all be walking around with a constant stomachache. I'm Ellis James. I'm Ellis

James. I'm Chris Scull. And I'm Tom Crane. And each week on this show we'll be looking at a new historical subject and today we're going to be discussing nightlife. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Cool. Roman pubs, DJs, Turkish drinks and the bonus bit today, the fourth part, the magical fourth part, is the circus. Yes. When was the magical fourth part is the circus yes when was the last time you had a proper night out out of interest so that pause tells you everything you need to know about our lives well on saturday i am going to watch the swans i'm going to watch swansea city play birmingham city yeah and then i am d'm DJing in London's fashionable Dalston. Oh, wow. But

I will not be drinking because A, I'll have to drive because it goes till 4am and it's a nightmare getting cabs at that time. And B, it's my son's fifth birthday party the next morning and so I can handle tiredness and I can handle a hangover. What I can't handle is both

at the same time. So I'm kind of night out adjacent on Saturday. But of course it won't be a proper night out because I'll be drinking squash. And see, you do incredibly long, complicated mixes, don't you, between records. Yes. With scratching and faders and bass being dropped out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The night ends for everyone else at 11, but Ellis will be there DJing, mixing until 4am, long after the doors have closed. Yeah, I'm, you know, I'm an artist really, more than a DJ. And music, all music is my easel. That's quite cool. Can I tell you, by contrast, the fact you're a DJ,

that's a pretty cool thing. Yes. I want to tell you something that happened just before we recorded this, which captures how lame my life has got. You're out DJing in Dalston. The last month, I've really got into chess, like in a big way. So I've downloaded this app on my phone. I'm learning to play chess and I love it.

Okay. What, could you not play chess before? I didn't fully understand it. I played it in a basic sort of, I know where the pieces go, but I didn't. I'm now understanding tactics of how it works. Anyway, I played a game just before we started recording down there in the kitchen on my phone. I beat the computer on intermediate level and I was so happy. I ran across the kitchen.

I jumped in the air. I punched the air and I yelled, I love chess at the top of my voice. And you know those moments when you sort of catch yourself, you think, that is the lamest thing anyone has ever done. I love chess, punching the air. I'm trying to think. Chris and I went to the theatre. We had a pint afterwards.

And that is it. I said to my wife, can I have a second pint? She said, absolutely not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Last time I went out for drinks, it was after a West Ham game, and this is how pathetic I am. The BBC's Nick Robinson from the Today programme

outlasted me in the pub. I had to go. Clang. But he was still there drinking at the table. New Year's Eve, I went out to drink at a friend's house and some food, and I was in bed by quarter past eleven. Did not make it to midnight. On New Year's Eve, I drove to a party in North London about an hour from where I live.

Because, you know, cabs are a nightmare, I drove so I didn't drink. We took both of our children, who are nine and four, and we expected maybe to go until 10pm. Yeah. And then they'd fall asleep in the car and that would be that. They were still loving life at quarter past 2am. Wow. And we had to drive back. No.

We got home at quarter past 3 and my son is 4 and he was winding down the window at the traffic lights shouting to hammered revellers, Happy New Year! That's so good. So you're sober till 2 in the morning and then driving home. I was sober, yeah.

Good on you. So I think our listeners are going to agree, what better three people to grapple the subject of nightlife than Nick Robinson, Ellis' kid, and... The chess boy. The AI chess bot that Crane just beat. I talked to one of the top DJs from the Hacienda in Manchester on Five Live about three weeks ago.

That's pretty cool. But I mean, for like five minutes, and he was on the phone. So I'm almost night out adjacent. God, that's pathetic. And it's worth mentioning to overseas listeners that the Hacienda closed in about 1994. So this DJ DJ I'm assuming is a minimum of 60. Yeah, yeah.

I would say he's about 60 but he did have a gig that night. He was DJing in Glasgow so he's still doing it. But yeah, we're night out Jason. We're night out Jason. Well, our listeners by contrast still live full, exciting lives in which they send in full and exciting

emails. Look at that for a link should we head into the correspondence yes please okay this email that we received actually today we don't normally go straight in because there's loads to get through but i love this email it's one of my favorite emails we've received to the show so i thought you know what we'll go we'll go straight in with it this is from someone called angela snape and she's emailed the show to say hi i've never taken the time to write into a podcast before but my son recommended it to me which makes me feel like however else i may have failed as a parent at least i've instilled him with a decent sense of humor to get him through life i'm sure you're

doing a great job oh i like that yeah that's very sweet thank you and it ends there no it doesn't okay um just you know firstly my time machine, this has such a good point in it. Firstly, my time machine would be a kind of reverse TARDIS. From the outside, it would look like an imposing official building, probably a tax office, and nobody in their right mind would voluntarily enter. But the inside would be a tiny cramped box with just enough room for a control panel, comfy chair, kettle, and a toaster. I do like that idea of something that nobody would bother to enter.

I think that's quite clever. Because if you've gone back, you don't want people coming back to your time machine and finding there's a Viking in it. You want it to be something that nobody's interested in going into. Yes. It's a good thought process. A phone box. Like a phone box in this day and age.

Yes. That'd be perfect. It's TARDIS-like and no one's really going in it anymore. But then you're not going back to this day and age. You live in this day and age. So you need something you can go back. It's immediately fallen apart. Like you could go back and send that email.

Yeah, exactly. The other day, Izzy texted me and said, I put a wash on but I didn't press start. Could you press start? And then I didn't press start. And then at the end of the day she said, should we hang out that wash? I was like, no. Sorry, I didn't press start and then i didn't press start and then at the end of the day she said should we hang out that watch i was like oh sorry i didn't press start she wouldn't like it did i was like well what a fucking mess well funny you should say that because angela snape would not have a problem with

that let me explain why she says i know there are many famous diabolical historical figures i could target but i'd like to go back to the moment when ironing was invented and scream, why? Into the face of whoever decided we should all have flat clothes. Whilst twatting them over the head with a Russell Hobbs Supreme Steam. When I think about the time, money and energy

that's been wasted on this utterly ridiculous chore, it's such a good point. I'm enraged and bewildered and remain convinced that we are ludicrously stupid species that deserve everything we get. When my children were small, they went to my mum's house and on noticing her ironing board piped up,

Nanny, why have you got a surfboard? And she was outraged that my kids had no idea what it was. And I had to explain to her that I had multiple jobs. I didn't give a shit that we had crumpled garments. I flick and stretch mine when they're wet. Job done. And I believe that once I've travelled back into the mists of time to put a stop to this nonsense,

I will return to a utopian present where everyone is a bit more rumpled, but happy and kind. War and poverty and suffering won't exist. Big huge love to you all. You rock. Stay creased. Angela Devon. One of my favourite emails.

Stay creased. The old flick and stretch. But is this not an invention? It's something like, is there no crinkle-proof clothes? It feels like something we should have wrapped our heads around. Yeah, my daughter has iron,

some, not all of them, are like iron-proof shirts for school. Oh, really? The shell suit embraces the crinkle, doesn't it? There are certain clothes that go, I am crinkled and this is how I should be. Yeah. I've gone the other way. I love that email. Mainly, well,

A, it really made me laugh, and B, I thought it's a really good subject for people to write in about. Things that you could go back to in the past and just basically put a stop to. Stuff that exists now, where you're like, we don't need this. Where are you going back and what are you stopping people from doing and starting?

We could call it the Borlaic Destroyer. And if there's something that you think is just a Borlaic, you could go back and stop it at source. Say, look, that is a Borlaic. Absolutely. So why are we still doing that? Or who started that? Ironing is a great example,

actually. Yeah, it is pointless ironing. I hate ironing so much. It's such a boring thing to do and why does it matter? See, I like it. Why? And I do it. And I, last night, I was ironing my daughter's school uniform at 10 to midnight.

Okay. Because I quite, I quite like her wearing flat clothes. And I know that sounds absolutely ridiculous. Because Izzy's very much of the flick and stretch. Okay. School. But I think Borlick Destroyer, there's going to be loads of these.

Yeah. It's the kind of thing, I mean, there is actually a purpose to it, but stuff like if you're self-employed, keeping your receipts. Yes. And all that. I mean, that's not a bad example because I kind of, how else do you prove your expenditure? But that's sort of, that's the ballpark we're in for Borlaug Destroyer, I think.

I would throw Daylight Savings up there. I've actually, now I've become a parent, messing with the kids' time. Oh my God, yeah. That is well up there for me. I would go to the moment the tie was invented and go, what the hell are you doing? Why?

Now that, that is a superb example. What a pointless thing. This bit of material is dangling around everyone's neck or they go to work or in sick form every morning. I'm trying to do it. Why do I care about this? What is it for? That's a great example.

And it's dangerous. I was consistently peanut-ed throughout secondary school and gasping for breath on the football pitch. What is the point of a tie? Get rid of it. There you are. So if you have any ball aches that you want to destroy, do email the show.

A world without ties. Can you imagine it? It would be a better world. It would, absolutely. So, Angela, that's a great email. Thank you for contacting the show. On this episode, for the fourth part that's only available to subscribers, oh, what a time for full-timers, we're not discussing ironing,

even as much as I would like to, because, sorry, Angela, I actually find it quite calming to iron. I think that's why I like it. I'm discussing the circus, and it's a really, really great bit of research provided for us by our historian, our resident historian, Daryl. So if you'd like to listen to that part, become a subscriber. It is £4.99 a month. You get an extra part in every episode.

You get episodes a week ahead of everyone else. It's ad free. It can't be. Can it? It is. Plus there's a bonus episode every month. Pre-sale for any live shows. So if you'd like to subscribe,

go to owhwattatime.com or anotherslice.com forward slash owhwattatime. Or you can just look on your Apple app, whatever your app is, and find it there. You can click on it that way. Yeah, same goes for Spotify. Or just Google it. Like, I don't think there's anything

that can't be solved by Googling it. Like, I do numerous podcasts now and I always give the web address. And I just want to say, or just Google it. Because no matter what you put, if it's vaguely in the right ballpark, you will get there. I've thought of something else, by the way. You find ironing relaxing. I don't iron as much as I should. There is one thing I do.

I thought you were going to say as much as I used to. Which is on the outskirts of ironing.ing which claire my wife thinks is quite weird yeah if i have slightly damp socks that have just come off the radiator and aren't quite dry i will slot the sock over the end of a hair dryer and turn on the hair dryer and inflate it like a wind sock and then dry it like that so maybe a minute and a half per sock um shoved over the end of a hair dryer and then two warm socks out the door and on with my day can i just say i think that is i think that is incredibly dangerous because you can set fire to hair dries right okay so um where do we go legally with this chris what are the what i think legally don't listen to Tom no even though he has

such warm comfort he's a comedy writer by trade everything he says is a joke the man is a joke no that isn't a joke

I do that every morning not every morning but I would say a minimum once a week I do that anyway I'll leave you to your own choices anyway

do what you need because we've discussed your washing clothes habits a couple of times this podcast. You need more underwear. Yes. You need more pants and you need more socks. Because it sounds... I have a lot of pants and a lot of socks.

So what's happening here? I tend to... We put on washes and it seems to be... Often it's the sort of thing... It's the socks really is the issue. And then they often get forgotten to the last minute. And I go, oh no, I haven't put socks in for a while. Everything else will be going around.

The kids clothes have been going around. My t-shirts and jeans and all these sort of things. They're spotless. But the socks, unfortunately. The forgotten guys. We've got big problems. We do. All right.

And don't forget, if you want to get in touch with the show, here's how. All right, you horrible lot. Here's how you can stay in touch with the show. You can email us at hello at ohwhatatime.com and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at owhattimepod. Now clear off. underdog win buzzer beater shootout walk off and absolutely every play in between is amazing from

football to basketball and hockey to baseball whatever the moment it's never ordinary at bet 365 must be 19 or older ontario only please play responsibly if you or someone you know has concerns about gambling visit connects ontario.ca. them on your adventure and use them how you want when you want that's the powerful backing of american express learn more at mx.ca slash ymx terms apply so on this week's show i'll be telling you about a turkish drink called boza i will be telling you about the birth of the dj and modern nightclubbing and i will be talking to you about the birth of the DJ at Modern Nightclubbing. And I will be talking to you about Roman Bowser and the circus. I don't know why I'm doing a Cockney voice for a Roman pun.

It doesn't make any sense. It's inconsistent. It's why you didn't get that role in Gladiator, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You were up for the Russell Crowe part. You insisted on doing it Cockney. I am Decimus Maximus. Right. Right, Aurelius.

What? Father to a murdered wife. Oh, father to a murdered wife. Right. Husband to a murdered wife. Oh, yeah, sorry. Whatever, I don't know. I've only barely got some acquaintance with the script.

Whatever, I don't know. I've only barely got some acquaintance with the script. Roman nightlife was, as you would expect, it was sophisticated and also it was stratified. So you had the popina, which was the ancient equivalent of a pub, and that came in for some real bad criticism from the empire's elite. Some of the worst criticism, in fact, was reserved for the popina. So the elites, of course, they had the space for entertainment, dinner parties, etc. And so they

failed to appreciate the need for public space for those without those luxuries. Now the pub, much like today, was where ordering Romans, normal Romans, the people who rarely feature, of course, in the history books or in television documentaries about emperors and senatorial politics, etc. They could gather to have a drink, to eat, to pick up men and women, be merry, have a laugh, and a place where they would be served by waitresses and young garçons. Now, I read this research earlier on, and it just made me want to go to the pub. So I apologise if I become distracted. More specifically than that, Ellis, hearing that makes me want to go and have a drink in a warm country. That's what it makes me think. I'm imagining people in the sun in Rome stood on the street corner with whatever the equivalent to a pint of Stella was back then.

It was actually hard to read this research because I read it about 11am and thought, I'm going to go to the pub right now. But do you know, I think pubs in Britain are better because I quite like a cold, you know, when it's cold outside and there's a roaring fire inside, maybe a bit of steam on the windows. A wintry pub is the best kind of pub. A really hot pub.

Really? No, like in the summer. I mean, you probably have beer gardens. But they'll have circular tables outside. You know, European cities, they have wide pavements where people can sit outside. They're designed differently, aren't they? It's all good, isn't it? I don't know. I think

the winter pub, where you walk in and you clap your hands and you rub them as you walk to the bar and your mates are already there. I think that is better. I think that's the best, actually. Right, we need to stop talking about this because otherwise I'm going to go downstairs. By the way, just one question.

When you say your mates are already there, do you mean that they haven't told you they're going out and it's actually a bit painful? You've run into them? No, I'm just perennially late there, do you mean that they haven't told you they're going out and it's actually a bit painful? You've run into them. No, I'm just perennially late. What do you mean? Okay, right. Now, in Roman writings, the papina, they were associated with the smell of food.

Oh, nice. Cooked to enable the drunk to carry on drinking. Oh, God. They were associated with the smell of wine or beer in northern provinces such as Britannia, Belgium and Gaul. They were associated with the smell of farts, of vomit and of singing, fighting, joke-telling. It just sounds like a modern night out, right? Now, the poet Horace called them greasy and foul. Slang terms such as ganium, which was common eating house, and the good gustium, the pothouse, convey that they were sort of dives or hovels for undesirables.

And I'm sure, like all of our listeners, we've all drunk in some pretty unsalubrious places. Yeah. Who am I going to use? A shithole. We've all drunk in a shithole. However, I like to think if I was in a pub that smelled of vomit, I might say, let's move on.

My favourite pub of all time, which sadly has been knocked down so I can only ever drink there in my mind, used to have sawdust on the floor for vomit. Oh wow, where was that? In Carmarthen. I've been in pubs with sawdust on the floor. Is that what it's for? Yeah, yeah. Carmarthen in the late 90s was covered in

sawdust. It was for vomit? People were just throwing up. Is that happening that often? And I saw my mate Johnny vomit in there and I saw the sawdust work its magic and I thought, oh, good, that is actually genuine. I thought that sawdust was for, like, drinks spilt on the floor, the sawdust just kind of soaks it up.

I didn't realise it was for vom. I think it all helps, isn't it? You're working in the kind of place where a lot of stuff gets spilled. I think it's for everything. I think if you spill a drink on the floor, the barman's not going to go, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's for vomit.

That's what you're doing. And piss. And piss. And piss. Do you remember the key moment in our lives in terms of the shift of the smell of the pub was just after the smoking ban. Huge.

So you would go into a pub or a nightclub and then you would realise, oh, this is what this actually smells like. Yeah. Horrific stench. It came in a year early in Wales. Oh, did it? I think it came in earlier in Scotland as well,

but it certainly came in earlier in Wales than it did in England. And I was living in Wales at the time. And it was weird. And I didn't think it would catch on. I thought there would be enormous, mass civil disobedience. But actually people were like, all right then, yeah, fine. And you would come home and you would stink of cigarettes.

You'd have to have a shower after a night out. One of my mates was a pub landlord, and he said, this smoking ban will never work. People were just simply, it's not going to happen. And then within a day, people were like, yeah. Yeah, I was working in a pub. And our landlord was like, I just can't see it. I just can't see it, all of our regular smoke.

Now, it wasn't just people like Horace, you know, poets like Horace who were talking about the Papina. These images or portrayals, they weren't just preserved in writing. On the walls of surviving Papinae, there are frescoes of typical scenes. So one shows Hedony the barmaid and is captioned, Drink served one as, if you pay double you will drink better, if you pay quadruple

you will drink falernian, which was a prized brand of wine. It's one of those jokes that's 2,000 years old. It doesn't really work anymore, but still you get the picture. It's got a certain charm. But graffiti, too, also points to habits and behaviours that went on inside the pub. So this little piece of graffiti, it's got a kind of back of a toilet door quality to it. So 16th of August, the Festival of Lady Ceres.

Here, three young fellows read their names. Onesimus, Lucius Valerius Isanius, Philomenus. Had a good time, one of them, the last named, with a woman. So... Wow. Little did those people, when they wrote that, they've known that that would still this long into the future,

people would be discussing that bit of graffiti written on a night out in Rome. In the Humanities Building Library at Cardiff University, where I went, when I was studying politics and history, there was genuinely quite funny graffiti on toilet doors. Right. But as funny as it was in the year 2001, I never thought they would be discussed on a podcast in 2,000 years' time.

Now, the first and last of these men, they were Greek slaves, and the middle one was a Roman freeman. So as buildings, they contained all sorts of facilities, these sort of Roman pubs. There was a bar, there was a counter, there were booths, there were spaces for games of dice and of cards, plenty of room for standing around and chatting. It just sounds like a good pub.

At night, they were lit using lamps. They could stay open long into the evening. Oh, I love that. Although, crucially, they didn't have any beds. So if you wanted any sort of action, for want of a better word, that had to be accommodated elsewhere. Now, in satirical writing, the publican was thought to be in constant battle with his or her customers,

watering down the wine, serving the cheapest food possible at the greatest profit and dreaming of murdering the fools who cross the threshold, which is a very funny quote when it comes to how landladies and landlords discuss their customers. Now, the watering down of the wine, that was a thing. Maybe I'm just drinking in different pubs or maybe I'm just older or maybe, I don't know, the circles

I move in are different. That was a big concern when I was about 18. That you would walk into pubs and people would say, yeah, they're watering down the Carlsberg. So it's too weak. So it won't get you drunk. They're ripping us off. That never happened though, did it? Because I heard the same, but I don't know if I actually

believe it. It's funny though, I was always told that about certain establishments. And some people, especially the people who were about a year older than you, when you first start going out, they would do things like they would take a sip of their pint and they'd go, ugh, landlord hasn't cleaned his lines properly.

The taps are off. And you'd be like, yeah, this guy knows what he's talking about. This guy should hang around with this guy. The pub guy knows what he's talking about. This guy, I should hang around with this guy. The pub guy knows what he's talking about. Yeah. Old Egon Rone over it. Yeah.

Now, the clients themselves in the pubs were denounced as assassins, sailors, thieves, fugitives, executioners, coffin makers, and just general drunks. So in the view of the writer Marcellinus, pub goers were gamblers, the sort who snorted through their noses as they played and were prone to squabbling over chariot racing. So I suppose that's the nearest you would get

to people falling out of a football or modern sport. And yet, even though poets and the Roman elites were criticising these places, they were omnipresent in Roman society. So more than 100 Popinio pubs have been identified amongst the ruins of Pompeii, for example. Oh, wow. Yeah, similar numbers have been found in Ostia,

and together this suggests that Rome itself had thousands, there were probably thousands of these pubs in Rome. I'm now thinking about pub crawls, Ellis. This is how suggestible I am. The mention of, like, thousands of pubs in Rome, in the war, oh, I am one to another. This is the most... I would like to thank Daryl, our historian,

for writing the most Proustian piece of research. Because honestly, my head is swimming with pub memories. I love the pub. Now, these pubs were hidden down back streets. They were pubs that served fans at the Colosseum. Like there would be pubs outside football grounds. Oh, that's awesome. Pubs outside Circus Maximus, at the theatre, those which served travellers coming in from outside Rome and so on.

That was the lowest form of public house. So there were several of the types, and these were distinguished usually by the provision of accommodation and food. So you had inns, the Caupoi, and then the Tabernai, which was a sort of an Iberian sort of taverna, a bit like the kind of place Tom was talking about a few minutes ago, although these places often only served drinks. And then the Thermopylia, which was a kind of snack bar. Now, the Kaupona varied. So sometimes they resembled the Papina pubs, but they had beds, so they're better suited to supporting prostitution. And sometimes they appeal to a wealthy clientele, affording private dining spaces for business lunches and meals out of an evening. Now, surviving literature regards the inn as more appropriate

for wealthy Romans to enter than the pub, but not by much. OK. Because the bed on offer might be nothing more than a bug infested mattress on the floor of a shared room I'll let you stay up drinking yeah yeah that's the option but all the better to leave this form of nightlife to the masses

and just to follow the old maxim circulated amongst the elites that said just as I do not care to live in a place of torture neither do I care to live among popinai so perhaps they might have wanted to live on a place of torture neither do I care to live among popini. So perhaps they might have wanted to live on the sort of vicar sobrius or sobriety

lane where there were no pubs or inns of any kind. There were not that many places the ancient Romans loved to drink That is so interesting. That's amazing again they're so like us, they're so modern aren't they? So many parallels.

It's unreal when you study the ancient rule. Yeah. And also you're just like, I could easily imagine myself just popping, like one day time machine. I'd love to go back, have a few drinks there. Great shout. Go to the Coliseum.

Yeah, yeah. Have a couple of pints before the game, if you can call it that. Go to the Coliseum and then win or lose on the booze. Do you think If you go and watch the football Here in England It may be different

For overseas listeners You're not allowed To take your pint To your seat You're not allowed to do that You have to have a drink Surely in the Coliseum Considering what's happening

On the ground People are getting stabbed And killed And there's lions Ripping off people's faces They'll be alright About you taking a pint To your seat

Won't you Because in the context of things, that's all right. I went to watch Wales play Latvia out in Riga. It must have been a Euros qualifier a few months ago for Euro 2024.

And we'd been on the piss all day and I got to the ground and I just became thirsty in that way that you do when you've been drinking since midday. And I to my friend I said oh buy me a pint at halftime and he said yeah sure no problem and he came back and he said oh no I said get me a bottle of water at halftime that's all I need because he was going to the bar I don't actually want another drink and he came back and he said unfortunately that they don't sell water here but they do sell lager that is eight percent so I got you one of those i was like

that's that's that's made everything worse now did you drink i did yeah and then a bloke just fell on me yeah that'll happen because everyone would be drinking eight percent beer my man just fell on me and then fell down some more seats i was like yeah this is, I get it. Horace would write about this and he would be absolutely damning. I've got a good segue here. I'm about to talk about drinks in Turkey. And once, when I worked on, I worked on Formula One for a year

with the BBC and as a production team, we went out and in the shadow of the Grand Mosque in Istanbul we said, why don't we have a few drinks tonight? And we must have sunk eight pints. And then towards the end of the evening one of us realised we've been downing non-alcoholic beer all night. Yeah. But did you feel drunk?

No. Maybe, maybe. Oh, interesting because I had a night once when I was drinking bottles of what I thought was beer but it was non-alcoholic beer

and I definitely felt tipsy there was that sort of because my mindset was that way and people around me were drinking alcohol

and getting drunk I assumed I was sort of tipsy and as soon as I realised I was like oh no I'm sober I'm going to introduce a new word

to your vocabulary Tom placebo they're not just a band placebo effect an effect that is noted. Indeed. So that's the end of part one. If you want to hear part two

straight away, then do become an Oh What A Time full-timer. It's just £4.99. What a bargain. And you can listen to it in one meaty piece, as it should be. If not, you catch it tomorrow. You can become an Oh What A Time full-timer

on ohwhatatime.com or on your app, I'm sure. Look down there. You can click on it. It'll be there. Thanks, guys. or on your app I'm sure look down there you can click on it it'll be there thanks guys Thank you.