Oh What A Time... - #70 Elections (Part 2)

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

This week we’re heading to the ballot box to discuss elections! The importance of eating racoon meat in Arkansas, how democracy worked in Britain before 1872 and how political party colours have evolved over the last century or so. And this week we’re also talking about: showers. Is anyone out there a power-shower fan? And is there a water source in the world with a lower pressure than the average nan’s house? If so, fire up your emailer: [e-mail] If you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before, why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER? In exchange for your £4.99 per month to support the show, you'll get: - two bonus episodes every month! - ad-free listening - episodes a week ahead of everyone else - 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 also 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Life and death were two very realistic coexisting possibilities in my life. I didn't even think I'd make it to like my 16th birthday to be honest. I grew up being scared of who I was. Any one of us at any time can be affected by mental health and addictions. Just taking that first step makes a big difference. It's the hardest step. But CAMH was there from the beginning. Everyone deserves better mental health care. Hello and this is part two of Elections.

Let's get on with the show. As Chris has explained, certainly Brighton in 1872 running for elected office, very complicated business. Plenty to do before polling day. That's still true today, of course. I've got a few friends of mine work for various political parties and it is just manic in the lead up to an election. Really, yeah. You know, you just don't stop. You are unable to stop. So there's the matter of getting selected, obviously, writing a campaign platform, choosing

the photographs to go in the literature, even getting onto the list of approved candidates in the first place. Booking Carluccios. Booking Carluccios. Dedication, political engagement. You need a decent presence on social media. All this sort of thing. It all adds to your profile. But over in the United States, and we don't really have this in the UK, there's a more perilous line to cross. Let's take Arkansas as an example. If you try to get elected in Arkansas, you'll be asked about

your culinary habits. Now, you can imagine, are you a vegan? Are you a vegetarian? It's not that. It's have you been to the Gillette raccoon supper and eaten the local delicacy, which is a slab of carefully prepared raccoon meat. What? And if you haven't, well, I'm sorry, you're not getting on the list. No. So it is basically, you've got to eat this stuff. Most of my knowledge about raccoons is like garnered from American films, but don't they generally eat out of bins?

Isn't that the thing? Yeah. I think of raccoons, I think of the meeting up of bins in films and the kids' cartoon that was on telly early on a Saturday morning, the Raccoons. Will Barron In which, to be fair, they didn't spend much time eating out of bins as much as my memories serves me. Will Barron What was the main baddie in Raccoons?

Will Barron Ellis will know this. Will Barron Cyril Sneer. Will Barron Cyril Sneer? Do you remember in the opening titles? Cyril Sneer would appear to be playing a computer game where he was just gobbling up forests. What was that about? Well, I didn't have a TV till I was 15, so a lot of stuff's lost on me. But I do occasionally see it at a friend's house.

Yeah, he was the biggest tycoon in Evergreen Forest, Chris. Do you not remember? And he was sort of pink. He was pink. What was he? He was like an elephant or an eater? Oh, he was an aardvark. He was a pink aardvark with a very long nose. And, I've got to say it, an even longer history of scheming his way through the business industry. I've got to say it. So this Arkansas restaurant that served raccoon, it was seen as such an important part of the local culture. Is that what it was? Yeah, of local culture.

So showing you're part of that sort of community. You've got to get involved, right? So it's a very particular routine. So it was one long time raccoon separate attendee once put it. The raccoons have to be completely clean with the head and entrails removed. We usually buy 800 to 900 pounds of it and soak it in salt water to remove blood and gaminess.

We cut it into pieces, boil it with veg, and make sure it's done all the way through. Then we smoke it for a couple of hours. It's fairly simple, but it's definitely an acquired taste. Back in 1990, the amount of raccoon meat served up run to more than 2,000 pounds, but there was no booze to wash it all down. So it all started in the small southeast Arkansas town

back in the 1930s when local farmers and hunters gathered after the annual hunt meeting. During the Second World War, the supper fell by the wayside, but in 1947, it was revived as a fundraiser. So the money originally went to support a high school football team, but these days with the high school closed and the football team no longer in existence, the money raised goes towards university scholarship. Now raccoon suppers were common all over the US in the early 20th century, with pride of

players being given to over large specimens such as the 16 pound raccoon served up the Pendleton Hill Raccoon Supper in Connecticut in 1912. So President Taft hit the headlines of the First World War when he was snapped eating possum at a similar event. Do you know what this reminds me of? Do you remember John Selwyn Gumber? No, who's that? He made his daughter, who was four at the time, eat a burger during the height of the BSC crisis in 1990. Oh yes!

What was his position? Who was he? He was Secretary of State for Health. Oh yes, I do remember that. Wow. He was involved in the BSC crisis, wasn't he? Yes. God, I remember that.

Do you know what he was? He had responsibility for food safety during the mad cow disease epidemic. Right, okay. And at the height of the crisis, he attempted to refute the growing evidence for BSE, Kreutzfeld-Jakob disease, which is the human variant, by offering his four-year-old daughter a burger in front of press cameras. Wow.

And it was at a constituency event. I will never forget this because it was on the news and she refused and then he ate the burger. Will Barron Good. Yes, absolutely. Will Barron Because I've got very, very vivid memories of the BSE crisis because I lived in a rural area. So it was something I vividly remember. But just, yeah, John Selwyn Gummer, he's at a fete or something. And he's like, honestly, British beef is fine. Look!

And he gets his daughter out. Man. Man. I love that she refused to eat it. I'm imagining she's just eating her chips and the onion rings. She's working her way around the burger. Come on, no, no. I will have the burger. Don't worry. I'm just going to... Oh, no. I've filled myself up on chips now, Dan. I'm sorry. You better have it. You better have it. I've filled myself up with chips. Doesn't he push her if she's right in the camera? And he comes from behind her and pushes

it into her mouth. Oh my God. Oh, that's quite pleasant, actually. Yeah. Because he was the environment secretary, wasn't he? He was Secretary of State for the Environment under John Major. And he was Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Ah, okay. So at the time. Yeah.

It's just one of those political moments that you're like, even, I was very young, I just remember thinking, this is, I'm going to be talking about this on a podcast in 34 years' time. It's a really weird way of showing how confident you are in the safety of saying, I'm so confident this is safe, I am going to make someone else eat it. Well, he did eat it himself as well. He didn't go, no, I'm going to leave it actually. But my daughter loves burgers. So let's go back to raccoon suppers.

Now Gillette's Suppo, which is run by the Towns Farmers and Businessmen's Club, gained its prominence as a place where would-be politicians and more than a few would-be Miss Arkansasers got going on their campaigns. Other necessary pit stops in the state include the Warren Pink Tomato Festival, the Hope Watermelon Festival, the Springdale Rodeo Parade, the Bald Knob Strawberry Festival. Now, Bill Clinton is probably Arkansas's most high profile politician. He was no exception. So he ate his way through quite a lot of raccoon during his lengthy career in

Arkansas politics, including 11 years as the state's governor. So those who followed Clinton on the press trail later record that he gamely took a few bites of the raccoon but really focused on ham, which was offered alongside smoked brisket, pork ribs, sweet potatoes, rice, large slices of cake and lashings of iced tea. So Clinton himself had other ideas as you know in 2007 the local high school had always fielded a good football team but it was too small to afford one. So the budget gap was filled when a crowd twice as large as the total population actually paid good money to eat barbecued raccoon. And it's an experience everyone ought to have once in a lifetime

as long as there's plenty of barbecue sauce to help make the raccoon meat edible. That's an experience I'm happy to not have once in a lifetime. It's certain things I get. People say, oh, you must skydive. You've never seen, I understand that. The idea that I must try raccoon meat doesn't feel like something I'm gonna regret on my deathbed. No, absolutely not.

Now we filled our plates with beans, slaw, and barbecued raccoon. My advice, you'll have a great time if you put a lot of barbecue sauce on the raccoon. In truth, Clinton had been a little anxious about the idea of eating raccoon to begin with. Do I have to eat it? He asked his friend Marion Berry, to which the reply came, no, not if you don't ever want to carry this place again. You don't have to eat it. Wow. Yeah. If you don't eat the raccoon meat, you're not going to win that election. And that's the

truth of it all. Right. So politicians present themselves as just the same as you and me, even when their own tastes are obviously very different, because, you know, Clinton did have a lot of folksy charm. And he was very good at coming across as the same as his voters. So Marion Barry was on to something in the 70s. He turned the Gillette raccoon sub into what it is today, a political staging post. So a soybean and rice farm resident in Gillette, he ran for office as a city alderman in 1976 and lent his support to Clinton, then the rising star of the Arkansas

Democratic Party. So as a governor, Clinton never skipped the raccoon supper. The same was true of Barry, who served on Arkansas's congressional delegation in the 1990s and 2000s. He knew where he had to be every January, whatever the weather. Wow, that's so interesting. Some of these things, you can't get out of it. It doesn't sound to me like anyone particularly enjoys the raccoon. It feels like it's something people feel they have to do. I mean, we've all been to restaurants, right?

I've seen every kind of meat, crocodile, etc. I've never seen a raccoon on a menu. No. Oh yeah, but the same is true of kangaroo meat and crocodile. I was about to say, we don't have raccoons here, of course we don't have those here. That's a very good point. But raccoon doesn't sound exotic, does it? Raccoon sounds feral and the sort of thing you find underneath your house.

Will Barron It's like the UK equivalent would be fox meat, right? Will Barron Yes, that's exactly what I was going to say. If you turn up at a restaurant they were offering fox meat a blank. I think I'm all right actually. Will Barron Do you think this is the most amount of times anyone has said the word raccoon in a 10-minute section of broadcasting? Certainly since the raccoons was on time, yeah. And is that an achievement?

Yeah, in a mad way. Absolutely. Well done us. Well, I've just had a look at SeriousEats.com. Despite what you might think, raccoon tastes pretty good when cleaned and cooked properly, like dark meat, chicken or turkey, though it's greasier and more tender than either. Where can you find raccoon to cook? If you live in the country, you might be able to buy one from a friend or neighbour. Raccoon will never take off here. I'm saying it.

You heard it here first. So today I'm going to talk to you wonderful boys about the changing political party colours in Britain. Now, it would be easy to assume that the classic party colours of Tory blue, Labour red, Liberal yellow have always been that way here, but that isn't the case at all. In fact, back in 1923, just before Labour formed a government for the very first time, their election poster featured a football player identified as your team. But this player wasn't wearing Labour red, it was wearing black and yellow stripes. So this is 1923. So Labour at that point, their colour identified on their poster is black and yellow stripes.

Very briefly, what are your thoughts on that as a political advertising image? The idea of a football player. It feels quite childish, doesn't it? Like a football player. This is your team. Will Barron Yeah. Not sure about black and yellow. Will Barron Not going for that? Will Barron Just reminds me of… Will Barron Watford. Dortmund.

Bees, Wasps. Okay, yeah, yeah. Dortmund. But Dortmund are the team of the people. Yeah, yellow, wood. Yeah, though they're more of a sort of highlighter pan yellow, aren't they, Brashear Dortmund? Yes, that's true. And what's your problem with Bees and Wasps being, sort of, in that being conjured up?

Being stung? Trying to have a bloody picnic, mate. So you're looking at that. I'm trying to have a bloody picnic. And then the Labour Party kept hassling me. So that would be the reason you wouldn't vote for them, because it would make you panic about sort of, you know. Yeah, I don't read the manifestos.

They're chasing me around when I'm trying to have a jam sandwich. So, early doors, let's say, Labour Party posters, not red, they were black and yellow stripes. And although in the early 1920s, around that sort of time, parties did attempt to try and standardise their colours into the format we now know today, it was a really slow process and parties were completely unable to agree amongst themselves who should have what colour. In fact, ahead of the 1950 general election, they were still trying to agree on what colours they should have. Which is, that's 30 years of discussion

already about who's... I mean, it can't be that complicated, can it? Will Barron All right then, graphite grey! Teal tension! Mason How after a month have they not just gone, can we just agree, can we just say, okay, we'll just pull colours out of a hat and that will be our colours? How are we still talking about this after 30 years? Will Barron What's amazing though is that we're now decades into the spin doctor age. Mason Yeah. Will Barron One of the main principles of that is consistent messaging. The idea that you could have different colours for the same political party in different

parts of the country is crazy, isn't it? It is, absolutely. There was a fundamental point where that tipped and they realised that they did need to create more uniform, consistent messaging. That was in the 1970s. Would you like to guess what the shift was that led to that? Colour telly. Colour television, exactly. It was only with colour television coming in that political parties really cemented their choice of colours. This was to do with advertising, use of colour in advertising and messaging and all these things that at that point they realised were

hugely important because it meant that this was now playing into people's homes across the country. But before then, El and Chris, it had been such a confusing mess. It's insane. In 1961, for example, Harold Macmillan was prime minister. And during that time, his constituency conservatives Association in Bromley, which is in the county of Kent here in the UK, hit the headlines because it decided to change its colours from the usual campaign colours of orange and purple and decided to change them to royal blue. Journalists were keen to find out if Bromley in Kent was an oddity. They found out amongst the various conservative associations in Kent, there was literally no consistent party colour. So this is in Kent alone, okay? So seven used

orange and purple, ten used only blue, one of these conservative associations used blue and white, another one used red, white and blue. They were all campaigning under completely different colours. That's incredible. It does feel like this could have been ironed out with a couple of phone calls, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not that complicated, surely. Also just for the party chairman to decide and send a letter. Yeah, exactly.

Red, white and blue for the Tories would make sense, I can see that. The orange and purple weird. Will Barron Well, the choice of blue for the Tories, obviously, came very much from that idea of the Union Jack and Britain, all these sort of things. That's where it's come from, an idea of Britishness. That is where it came from. But at that point, it just didn't exist at all. And Kent wasn't unique in its patchwork quilt of campaign colours. Things even confused the most seasoned politicians. For example, in the early 70s, Conservative Prime Minister Ted Heath, he was spotted with a red rosette. Bear in mind, he's the Conservative Prime

Minister, which he explained was necessary because he was off campaigning in Durham. And in Durham, they saw the Conservatives as red, even if the rest of the country didn't. That's so shame. That's fantastic. And this was built on a fine tradition of British political confusion in terms of colours. A century earlier, Prime Minister William Gladstone was forced to constantly change colours and rosettes and ribbons as he crossed between county boundaries when campaigning in your very own Wales. For

example, the South Wales counties of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire as well as Cardiff, they were all fine since politics there were coloured Tory blue and Liberal red. But when he crossed into Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire or Ceredigion, it was the other way around. So Liberal blue or Tory red. It flipped. And in North Wales, it was even more confusing. Flintshire used yellow for the Liberals and blue for the Tories, but in Denbighshire, the Liberals used green. So basically, it was just all over the shop in Wales. There was just no consistency of colour. Will Barron But it'd be that thing of if you were one of

his assistants, or if you work for the local party, you'd be like, right, we'll get you in the car now, we're going to do a whole day of campaigning. It's all right, I've got 30 rosettes. If you forgot that stuff. I mean, the rosette is daft anyway. I mean, I very vaguely remember people wearing rosettes to rugby matches in the late 80s. Yes. And it is just a stupid look, which has completely died out and will not be coming back. Do you still see them in politics or not really? Have they sort of died away a bit? Yeah, yeah, you still see them in politics.

You still see them in politics. It's a bit like a little carnation, isn't it, that you sort of put on. It's a strange thing. I love that, when old footches in the 70s have got like huge rosettes. It's great. You know this confusion about colours? It's, I feel like it was a thing of the past, but as you're talking, Crane, I just had this memory and I just got a quick look and it's true. There was a conservative candidate in 2024 who deliberately put his image on

like a red background and started posting pictures onto Twitter with slogans. Oh, I remember that. Yeah. His name was Robert Lagen. And he would see, he and he would create red background images like Labour for Lagen, trying to sow confusion and have pictures of his face in different colours. Even though he was a Conservative candidate, he would be positioning himself like he was a Labour candidate using the colours. That's so interesting.

Yeah. Well, hoping to hoover up Labour voters. Hoping to hoover up, yeah, sow confusion and maybe convince people that he was actually a Labour candidate when he was actually a Conservative candidate. In terms of political colours, obviously the thing it makes me think about is football clubs, football shirts, identifying in that sort of way. And football clubs change colours. Yes, that is true.

Cardiff, famously. Yeah. ELEAD United, it was Don Revy who changed Leeds to all white because he was inspired by Real Madrid. Well, Brazil famously changed their colours. I think it was the 1950 World Cup final. They lost to Uruguay in Brazil and there was such a, I think they called it the Maracanazo, it was such a national humiliation that they decided they had to change their shirt colours

and they played in yellow after that point. How interesting. Wow. And also now sports companies change the colours of teams and clubs because obviously it's very difficult to come up with a brand new innovative design every year when you can't change a badge or when you can't change the colours. So England and Wales, we've been playing football since the 1870s. We've always worn red, and England have always worn white, that's fine, there hasn't been a clash. But England

wore red socks in 2016. So what did Wales play in? We played in slate grey and lime green. And you're like, yeah, that does traditional Welsh colours. Is this a fan to memory or did packets of salt and vinegar walkers used to be blue? Yes. Yeah. And then they changed them to green. Occasionally you get people going, well, I remember when cheese and onion was blue and I thought Britain was a better place if I've got to be totally honest. Cheese and onion is blue. Cheese and onion is blue walkers.

Well whatever, I remember crisp as I used to. I can't remember how it was. I just remember it was different. Those people are reminiscing about yesterday. We used to leave our doors open. Yeah crisp colours as it is now is right and I love my country. Thank you. It's said to these political colours then. We talk about football clubs and their shirts. Would you like it if the political parties, I was thinking about, released in time for the new election each time a new suit? There was an official suit. Like M&S when England are at a World Cup? Yeah, exactly. But the collar would be different.

You'd be quite excited to see what it looks like. It's kind of, what's the look? What's the new suit for this election in the way there's a new football shirt? Not single breasted, not double breasted, triple breasted. I don't even know how that works. The Prime Minister's got number 10 on his back. He's got a quadruple breasted suit. I can't lie, I'm listening now. I'm interested. has got number 10 on his back. He's got a quadruple breasted suit.

I can't lie, I'm listening now. I'm interested. Triple breasted suit. I'm going to sit down and I'm going to hear what they've got to say because they're a maverick. Sleeves down to the knees. Knee sleeves. Your knee sleeves. Okay. So, Gladstone's constantly having to change his rosettes as he goes around Wales. It's worth noting though that when he started out as a conservative, he knew all about Tory red because when he was elected for Newark in 1832, at the very beginning of his career, his entire campaign was decked out in that colour. So he had experienced red as the colour of Tories. He had a red club, a red band for which he paid 15 shillings per individual member per day and various red inns or pubs where refreshments were distributed to his supporters, the true red. So they had official pubs as a way of

marketing Gladstone and his party. So people would go and drink there and drink cheap booze as being part of the party. Isn't that crazy, that? So there are official political pubs that you would go to. Will Barron But think of Farage. He's always in the pub having a pint. Will Barron Yes, that's true. But he's visiting a pub. There's not an official… Will Barron Yeah.

Will Barron …UKIP. I don't know who you represent now. Will Barron Ten years out of date! Will Barron What's his party? Will Barron Reform. Will Barron It's not an official reform. Will Barron UKIP hasn't existed. Will Barron UKIP hasn't existed. Will Barron UKIP hasn't existed. Will Barron UKIP. I don't know who you represent now. Ten years out of date! What's his party? Reform. It's not an official reform.

UKIP hasn't existed for a decade, has it? Well, can I shock you, Chris? It's not my political leaning. Is he the political satirist, Tom? I mean, I'm absolutely not. There aren't official reform pubs or Tory pubs that you'd go to now, but then he had these red inns or red pubs around the country where you would go to. Imagine walking into a pub and going, oh, we need to leave. It's a bit heavy in here. It's a Liberal Democrat club. I'm prepared to die on this hill. There are not enough themed pubs.

Right. If there was the Margaret Thatcher and it would just go in there and it was just power suits, like hard rock cafe, but just power suits. And you go up to the bar and you say, can I have a glass of milk? They say, we don't do milk. They'll go, you know, we charge you for it. And I go, yeah, fine. 2024. Yeah. But it's 1980s prices.

Oh, look at the Ted Heath. The John Selwyn gummer. It's just burgers on the menu. Will Barron In one of the most remarkable Google moments of my life, I was trying to find out more about these William Gladstone pubs. I typed in last night, did William Gladstone have red pubs? And Google said, showing results for, did William Gladstone have red pubes? Do you think that's the first time that's ever been googled? And it's the first time I've had to clear my history while researching for this podcast. It's such a, that would be such a weird niche thing for me to look up.

In 2024, did William Gladstone have red pubes? Come on then, did he? What did you learn? Don't leave us hanging. Google was unable to provide that information, but it did think that's what I was looking for. Well, I've only ever seen pictures of him with white hair. So I don't know. I wouldn't be able to hazard a guess. This is why this is such an intriguing subject. Yeah. If anyone listening knows whether William Gladstone had red pubes, do get in contact.

Do you know, actually, Ellis, as he moved between different parts of Wales, he had to change the colour of his pubes, depending on who he was campaigning to. Awful time for his assistant. This was a weird time of it in the run-up. Labour was not alone in getting things jumbled, I think it's worth saying. A similar study of the conservatives in 1927 noted that whereas Brighton members favored purple and primrose, in rugby they preferred orange and in camber, a wasp like black and yellow, and the precise choice of the hue was often rooted in kind of local circumstances, the colours of leading families or maybe more esoteric choices like racing or the football. And at that time,

primrose was used by some conservatives because it was the colour of Benjamin Disraeli's favourite flower. It's quite sweet, isn't it? It is. It's just, yeah. You'd think that you would set, well they have done now, but you'd think it would far earlier they'd have settled on a colour instead. That's true. Well as a final thing, do you know why the Tories did not settle on blue around that time in 1927, the early 20th century? Why actually at that point they didn't want blue as their colour? Any idea? This is a final thing. It's quite interesting. Something to do with the war?

colour. Any idea? This is a final thing. It's quite interesting. Something to do with the war? No, not to do with the war. So it was to do with the colour's association with temperance. So notably the originally American blue ribbon movement, which was kind of basically not ideal for Tory Republicans and their otherwise kind of vast sales of beer, because temperance was traditionally associated with the Liberal Party. They just didn't want it to be their colour. So that's why in the early 20th century, blue was not the colour of choice for the Conservatives. And that is just basically the mad mix and confusion of political colours in Britain before colour television. There you go. There you go. All right, that's it this week for elections.

That has been absolutely fascinating. And if you want even more Oh What A Time, if you want bonus episodes, episodes early, ad free and presale access to any future live shows, you know what to do. You can become an Oh What A Time full timer for all your links and all your options on how to do that, go to owhatatime.com. Otherwise, we'll see you next week. Thanks for listening, bye. So Thank you.