Something Rhymes with Purple - Bulge Bracket

Episode Date: July 20, 2021

Bears, Bulls! High, Low! Buy, Sell! And welcome, Purple People, to another episode. This week we’re scaling the wall of Wall Street and trekking the Square Mile of The City as we climb the ladder of high finance! Who knew that the world of bankers and brokers was so full of broken benches, brutish beasts and and bad behaviour. Are you a stag? Have you seen a dead cat bounce? Are you standing on a block of wood or hiding amongst the hedges? Susie makes a death pledge while trying on a vest, but Gyles is too busy opening his kimono… confused? Don’t worry, so are we- finance is a whole new world! Elsewhere we open some punny, porridge related purple post and receive some sage advice. So whether you’re anxious about being an IPOD or are a bit of a FUNT, we have something here for you! Elsewhere Susie and Gyles answer your purple post! Who can claim credit for the word Barbecue- our money is on the Haitians over the French but get in touch with us at [e-mail] if this analysis has given you the mulligrubs. A Somethin' Else production To buy SRWP mugs and more head to.... https://kontraband.shop/collections/something-rhymes-with-purple Susie’s Trio: Lectory- a place for reading Oxyphonia- Excessive shrillness of voice Consenescence- growing old together Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Something else. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Hello and welcome to Something Rhymes with Purple, the podcast about words, language, meeting people. That doesn't usually come from me. It comes from my co-presenter, Giles Brandreth, who has met quite literally everybody, who is anybody, it seems to me, whereas I'm a bit of a hermit. Morning, Giles. Good morning. It's great to be with you. I love being with you. It's so good to be with you, even though we are at a distance because we record this in England, speaking to the world. And Susie is usually at her home in Oxford and I'm usually at my home in London. Yes, you are in your basement. I sit in front of a large pitcher of fish. And so it has been for a very, very long time. But as I said before, I quite like doing it this way. I find it more kind of direct somehow, which is a bit strange. But I wonder what is happening in the hub that

is London's city, because that's what we're talking about today. We're dusting off our pinstripe power suits, aren't we, as we slip back our hair and walk the trading floor of high finance. I went into London for the first time officially. I've been in for very social things, but I went in for work the other day for the first time in a very, very long time. And I have to say it was lovely to be back. Didn't go to the city, though. How about you? I've been to the city a number of times in recent weeks, and it's still very quiet indeed. And you notice it in the coffee shops around the huge skyscrapers in the city. And the underground is much quieter. I've never really been at home in the world of the city. When I was a child, I remember my father, when we were driving along the Strand, we passed a taxi and in that taxi was sitting a man called Nubar Gulbenkian.

And he was famous for being one of the richest people in the world. And he always had a beautiful buttonhole, usually carnation. He smoked a cigar and he travelled around London in a London taxi because he said, it can turn on a sixpence, whatever that may be. He was so rich, he had no idea about the small change. And I thought at that stage, oh, that sounds like the life for me,

to have my own taxi, to have a pinstripe suit and a buttonhole. And then when I grew up, I met people in the world of high finance and I realised that they spoke a language that I simply don't speak. Money, curiously, as long as you've got enough, money doesn't mean very much to me. I was consoled when I discovered that Freud, the great Sigmund Freud,

did not consider money as a basic instinct, not a basic desire, money. We need things like work and love, but we don't necessarily need money. But there are some people who are driven by it. I am not one of those. I have tried to raise money occasionally, and so I've been to meet financiers in the city, but all this stuff about what they do and these, well, it's all strange to me. It's gambling to me. And I can't make these forecasts. If you were following the recent Euro 2020, you will know my way of predicting things is to turn to my mystic banana, to ask it a question, to cut open the tip of the banana. If there's a clear why, the answer was yes.

a question to cut open the tip of the banana. If there's a clear why, the answer was yes. If there isn't, the answer is no. That's all I know. But I'm fascinated by the world of finance. How about you? Yes, likewise. Never even occurred to me to go anywhere near banking. But I remember those sort of career fairs that you would get at school. They always offered doughnuts and various things at their stand. Can I say how brilliant that was of them to indicate right from the beginning, even at the school careers fair, that this is where you get the doughnuts? Wonderful, full of jam, covered in sugar. Come here to us and we can give you these delights. But I think it was actually, it was the vocabulary, the language of it and the detail. The language is really interesting.

And I remember the writer John Lanchester recalling a sort of typical conversation amongst bankers that a sort of outsider might catch. And, you know, the sort of effects of bond yield retardation or subprime and CDOs and CDSs and all sorts of acronyms. And he said, you know, it's easy to think that someone is trying to con you, but with all tribal languages, it's not explicitly designed to hoodwink always. It's not as sinister as that. You know, there is the social aspect of language again, and it's power lies and it's giving that community a shared experience. So the language is absolutely fascinating and also quite humorous as always. one that i remember was um for the different types of banker there's there's a twat which of course um made me prick up my ears and the twat is an acronym for technical wizard with anti-social tendencies and that is a banker who's very

competitive and and astute but not necessarily a team player um and then the opposite of that is a star, S-T-A-R-R, strategic tryhard with awesome reputation and relationships. So, you know, like any other business, particularly a commercial business, I think you will find all of these wonderful kind of bits of shorthand that they themselves will understand, but it totally keeps the rest of us out. Well, some of them are quite terrifying. I had a neighbour who eventually became the head of Goldman Sachs. And he was, I think you'd be pleased for me to say this, he was truly a terrifying character. He had, of course, in his youth, I think, picked up an Olympic gold medal. He was totally driven and completely terrifying. And I went and did a function for Goldman Sachs. And I seem to remember meeting

somebody there who was a part, they were all partners of Goldman Sachs. And I said, do you not have any partners here? And they said, no, if you apply to be a partner and you don't succeed, you leave Goldman Sachs. That's it. You can't stay on the junior ranks. If you think you're good enough to be a partner, you apply and they won't have you, then you are out. I don't think they fire you. I think you just choose to move on. Look, Susie, why don't we just dive straight in and begin, if we have an international audience, with the whole debate of Wall Street versus the city.

They're the two big financial hubs in the English-speaking world. The city, with a capital C, known as the Square Mile, literally because it is a square mile of London. It has its own special status. I once had a business in the city at the Barbican, and I discovered it is like a little world. It's its own government, its own mayor,

dating back to people like Dick Whittington, who was Lord Mayor hundreds of years ago. It has its own independent police force. It's a world on its own. And its equivalent over in Lower Manhattan is Wall Street, home of the New York Stock Exchange, so-called because there used to be an actual wall there, erected in the 17th century by the Dutch settlers, intent on keeping out British sailors and more so British pirates. There's the Wall Street bull.

Have you actually seen the statue? Technically, it's called the Charging Bull, designed by one Arturo de Modica. But let's now begin to go into the detail of some of the language of this world. The bull market, having mentioned a bull, tell me about the bull market, the bear market. Let's go into some of these financial terms. What do you know? Well, there's quite a few animals actually appearing in the wildlife of Wall Street and the city of London.

So, first of all, the bear. The bear is a downward trending market and the bull is an upward trending one. And those began to appear as terms in around the 18th century. And those began to appear as terms in around the 18th century. And if you look in the Oxford English Dictionary, they will tell you that the use of bear probably goes back to an old saying, an old idiom, if you like, to sell the bear's skin before one has caught the bear. Which is a little bit like... Counting your eggs. Yes. So these bear skin traders, or jobbers as they were known, often sold their wares before actually receiving them. And then they'd hope for a downturn in the market. So they might make a larger profit on the transaction, if that makes sense. So those are the bears. And then at the other end of the market, you've got the bull. And that's someone who is feeling bullish. They look at a sort of upward trending market. is feeling bullish. They look at a sort of upward trending market. And we're not quite sure how that one came about. It came about a bit later. And some people say it was drawn from the horrible

practice of bull and bear baiting, or even from the fighting styles of the two animals, because it said a bear swipes down with its paws while a bull thrusts upwards with its horn, hence the kind of upward, you know, turning market. So originally, the bear and the bull actually were terms for the speculators on the market. And then originally, they were applied to the markets themselves, the market conditions that were considered favourable or not to the investors. So that's how those came about. And then you've got lame ducks as well. So someone who's defaulted on a debt, and obviously we have that in sort of general English as well. One more animal I should mention here, which is the stag. So a stag

profit or stagging, I think it's known as flipping in the US. That's when someone buys into a company's initial offering or new shares and then intends to sell them straight away. So they hope to take advantage of the rising stock price and they are known as stags. And again, a little bit of mystery around this one, but it's possible it emerged from the use of stag as an informant because in criminal slang, to turn stag was to tell on someone. So in the brilliant dictionary that I mentioned quite often, Francis Gross's classical dictionary of the vulgar tongue, he calls a stag a rogue who impeaches his confederates. So a stag trader who perhaps turns on the other investors to kind of quickly make a profit might go back to that. But quite why a stag rutting horns?

I don't know. And finally, one last animal for you is the dead cat bounce giles have you heard that one i've heard the expression never quite know what it means yeah so it's the kind of temporary upswing in stock prices after a sharp fall as though a cat's falling to the ground and even though it's dead there will be a slight sort of ricochet from the ground it's rather horrible isn't it and there was one quotation that you'll find in the oed from the ground. It's rather horrible, isn't it? And there was one quotation that you'll find in the OED from the Washington Post. If you throw a dead cat against a wall at a high rate of speed, it will bounce, but it is still dead. So it basically means any kind of

brief improvement, but something that's not going to last. So this is the world of stocks and shares and the stock market. Where does the word stock come from? And you're buying stocks, you're buying... What's the difference between a stock and a share? See, I don't know anything. I wouldn't know where to begin. So, stocks originally, in the general sense of the word, were made from blocks of... Or they were made from trees. They were trunks or blocks of wood. So, it comes from a German word stock, meaning a stick. And the notion of a kind of fund or a store of things perhaps comes from the idea of a kind of growth from that firm foundation, that kind of solid start. It's not an obvious sort of leap, but that arose in kind of

late middle English. And then a share is, well, gosh, I should have referred to some financial friends to tell me exactly what the difference is between a stock and a share, but at least share is a little bit more obvious in that you have a share of the profits at the end of it. You also have hedging, of course. Well, yeah, exactly. You've got blocks of woods.

Now we're now down into the woods with hedging. I mean, I've heard of hedge funds. I've never understood what they're about. It seems to me to be just gambling. But I'm assured by people I know who are hedge fund managers, oh, no, no, no. They say as they count their millions, no, no, no, no element of gambling. It's all skill. We're looking after the market. Don't you worry. What is a hedge fund and why is it called a hedge? Well, because if you like, the people who are investing in hedge funds or dealing in them are limiting or hedging their risk. So the idea of hedging has been around since, well, Shakespeare's day. I think in The Merry Wives of Windsor, there is I myself sometimes am fain to shuffle, to hedge and to lurch.

So it's the idea of kind of avoiding commitment, if you like. Or even hiding behind a hedge almost. Is that what that means? Yeah, it's a sort of kind of avoiding commitment if you like. Or even hiding behind a hedge almost is that what that means? Almost yeah it's a sort of idea of sort of dodging an issue. Shifting between the hedges as you're darting along almost like a character in a maze I don't know. Or kind of surrounding it so it's not sort of completely transparent it's interesting isn't it but it soon began to be used in relationship to financial transactions and to hedge a piece of land carried on then into the world of finance, meaning to limit it in terms of size. So it's the idea of kind of giving a boundary to it,

if you like. So this gave rise to the idea of a secure or limited risk, which is what hedge funds are all about. So it's kind of encircled. There are clear parameters. That's the idea. Also, just while we're talking about stocks and that tree trunk, you have to remember tally sticks. You know, when you talk about keeping tally, a tally stick actually was a literal stick. So if you went into a tavern centuries ago and you had a pint, the tavern keeper would mark on, just draw a little notch or score into the tally stick that you had had a drink. And that would be used to tot up the credit or the debit at the end of the evening and that's where we get the idea of scoring from so if you're scoring in football you have made a mark on that figurative tally stick the broker why are you

breaking things when you're making yes you're not actually breaking things. Well, not really. This, we think, goes back to a word brought over by the Normans. A brocour, B-R-O-C-O-U-R, was a small trader. And that, in turn, may come from a very old French word meaning to broach or pierce a keg of alcohol. a keg of alcohol. So the idea was of a wine dealer or a retailer or a middleman or middlewoman. And indeed, that is how a broker then is understood. Somebody who is an intermediary and will do things on your behalf. Gosh, it's all, I mean, it is a completely foreign language to me. I just, well, I mean, there we are. My revenue. Revenue, that's good. Where does revenue come from? Revenue is from the French meaning coming back. So you get a return, a literal return on your investment, I suppose. I mean, things like that I sort of feel quite comfortable with.

I just remember during the credit crunch, which I think was Oxford's phrase of the year or word of the year at the time, there were kind of glossaries published in the papers every day because we were suddenly having to learn about deleveraging and, you know, which I still don't understand, I have to say. So for all the financial wizards listening to our episode, maybe they can give us a crash course at some point. We need a crash course or in a sense, we need them because, you know, where would we be without these people looking after?

But I hope they are looking after our money. Do you have a pension and things? I do have a pension. It's not as big as I would like it to be because I'm a freelancer, which I think is the lot of most freelancers. But a pension, if you want to know where that comes from, is from the Latin pensio, meaning a payment. And if you stay at the pensione, you are also making a payment to stay somewhere. So, yeah, those two are linked. But what I'm rather alarmed about, actually, as we're having this conversation, is not only I'm ignorant of the words, and that's intriguing.

I want to find out, I mean, for example, I'd like to find out about the word mortgage in a moment, where that comes from. But I'm also getting a little bit alarmed for both of us about what the future holds, since we've clearly got no idea. We earn money, we pay our taxes, we can tell us where taxes come from. And I suppose we put a bit aside for a rainy day and we give it to people to invest on our behalf. Let's unpick a few of those words before we get too depressed about how grim the future looks for us. Take us through mortgage and invest. Where's mortgage come from? So mortgage sounds a little bit dark because it actually sort of means, is mort meaning death and then gage meaning pledge. It's a death pledge, which might make you think, oh, it's going to kill you to pay

it off. But actually, it's the idea of a loan that once you pay it off, it is dead. I mean, in some ways that would apply to every loan. But the idea is you pay off your mortgage and then the debt is settled. It's the debt that's dead, not you. That's the good news about that. Yes, that's the key thing, hopefully. What about investment? Invest is just a nice one because it was literally to put on a vest albeit a sort of vest of office so we still talk about an investiture into office which meant ceremoniously or ceremonially putting on the attire and the vestment of office so that was the idea there and the idea is if you invest in something, you again are kind

of assuming a part in it. You were taking on a role in that venture. So that is the idea behind that. Credit is quite a nice one because it's actually all about trust. It goes back to the Latin credere, meaning to believe or to trust. So the idea developed from, say, a shopkeeper's trust that a customer will pay for goods at a later time if they make it on credit. Let's hit rock bottom. Bankruptcy, where does that come from? Bankruptcy, one of my favourite etymologies, you will probably remember this because it goes back to the Italian bancarotta, which means a broken bench, because in medieval days, money lenders, I guess, would have these tables that

they would set up on the streets and people would come to their tables and barter or borrow money or whatever. And if a money lender went out of business for whatever reason, they would either physically smash their tables or their benches or figuratively their bench would be broken and they could no longer operate. So it's bancarrota, a broken bench. Please, if you've got money to invest, don't invest it in me because I'm not a good bet. I know that. I have over the years put money into theatrical ventures, put money into shows, and I think I've lost almost always. A couple of times I've invested in the right show. I've invested in my own ventures and they say never invest in your own ventures.

But if you're trying to raise a lot of money, the people lending you the money make you invest in it. They say you must have some something. Is it a snake in the game? No. Skin in the game. You're familiar with that phrase? You could have skin in the game. I don't know what that means. What's the origin of that skin in the game? No, no, actually. That's really interesting. I'm going to look it up in the OED and see when we have the first. Because I had to have skin in the game when I was raising money to put on a, what was a theatrical idea, a show called Royal Britain. We wanted to tell the story of the kings and queens of England from the reign of King Edgar, the king of the East Angles back in the 9th century, up to the present day.

And we decided to put it on at the Barbican, which is in the City of London. And we went around the City of London raising money here, there and everywhere. This venture opened in the run-up to 1990 in that big recession. And not enough people came. So it was like a show that failed. People liked it, but not enough people liked it. And so we went bust. And, oh dear, it was so,

I can't tell you how depressing it was. I mean, everyone knew that they were investing. I mean, things go up, they come down. Everyone was taking a risk very kindly. Nobody really seemed to complain. In fact, one of the people who invested in it, a very lovely man called, no longer with us, called Sir Leslie Porter. He was the chairman of Tesco.

And he put up some money, quite a lot of money, I think, but maybe it wasn't a lot to him, 30,000, 50,000 pounds. And I said to him, I'm so sorry, Sir Leslie, we seem to have lost all your money. He said, don't worry. It comes from my giggle money fund. I said, your giggle money fund? He said, I've got a little fund of giggle money so I can support Ventures for a bit of a giggle. How amazing.

I'd love one of those. I'd love a giggle fund. Well, it would be. And it was a great idea. But the truth is, it didn't work. I wasn't running it possibly well enough. And we lost the money. But having skin in the game certainly concentrated my mind.

Yes, and now I have an origin for you. Please. It's quite interesting, actually. So the Oxford English Dictionary says it first appeared in the 1970s. 1976 is the first reference. But it says it's not clear whether the skin refers to yourself. So you're putting yourself at risk, literally, or sort of physical self, your skin, or whether it refers to money, because skin was once short in money slang for frog skin. And a frog skin was a $1 bill because of the green colour of the bank

note. So there you go. That's really interesting. Taught me something today, Giles. Thank you. Well, thank you. You've taught me something today. I think I've got to take my finances a little bit more seriously. Though I have to say, I am very lucky in that I have a good, sensible and careful wife. You do. Does all the bookkeeping. She's amazing. The VAT. And she keeps us on the straight and narrow. It's wonderful not thinking about money, but it's

been fascinating talking to you about money. So if there are, if we've got lots of this wrong, which we probably will have done, do please get in touch with us. If you are a broker, don't bother to send me an email. I won't understand it, even with help from Susie Dent. If you like, just after the break, I can give you some of my favorite slang things from some bankers that I spoke to a while ago. Oh, I'd love to. I want the lingo of the banking community so that when I do meet them for a drink,

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powerful backing of american express visit amex.ca slash ymx benefits vary by card terms apply we are back and we're talking jiles and and I, about the language of high finance, which, as you will have surmised, is a little bit opaque to us. Though I did promise a few tasters, Giles, of some lingo that I picked up whilst talking to some bankers a few years ago. It's probably changed because the whole idea, as I always say, of tribal shorthand or slang of any kind is that as soon, other people scale the wall, it has to move on and sort of recode itself. But should I give you a few that I liked? Okay. So window dressing, I suppose we know that one, any accounting practice that makes a balance sheet look better than it really is. But do you remember my opening the kimono, which went along with that, which is to just publish all your results, good and bad,

and basically get it all over with. And I love that expression. I love it. It's an open kimono evening. Yes. Exactly. So that's brilliant. A non-trading day on a stock exchange or other commercial market. So a sort of market holiday is sometimes called a valium picnic, strangely. A haircut is from investment bonds, I think. So those who have lent money to a company or government and aren't going to get all of their money back. So similar to the stories that you've just told, everyone loses the same amount of hair. So everyone gets a haircut is the idea there. And then during the credit crunch of 2008, wasn't it? I think credit crunch for me is a bit overly

cosy because it sounds like there's a sort of chocolate bar around about it. Yes. Oh, I'd love a credit crunch of 2008 wasn't it i think credit crunch for me is a bit overly cozy because it sounds like there's a sort of chocolate bar around about it oh i'd love a credit crunch tasty but that was really productive in terms of language so you had things like a ninja loan and that's a loan or mortgage made to someone who has no income no job no assets a ninja loan with some of it's really dark and a bit cruel actually so jingle mail is the practice of sending back one's house keys to the mortgage company because you can't keep up with payments i really don't like that one um there is an ipod i suppose many of us could relate to this one insecure pressured overtaxed and debt ridden and uh finally the font. The font is somebody who is financially untouchable.

You know, often in the news, if they've got secret Cayman Island fonts, they are fonts. So those are just some of the words that I picked up. As I say, there will be loads more. There's killer bees, there's spinning, there's fire drills, there's bake-offs and beauty pageants. And a beauty pageant is a pitch where you're basically an investment bank and you're competing for the same business. And the bulge bracket, I'll leave you with this one, sounds a bit rude, it's the collective noun apparently for the world's largest and most profitable investment banks, the bulge bracket. Wow. So if you have financial stories or queries to do with the world of money and the language of money rather than us solving your problems because we can't

go to martin lewis but if you want to talk about words and high finance do drop us a line it's purple at something else dot com who has been in touch with us well more on our shop puns because um the shop pun names keep flooding in do you remember we talked about um creative shop naming from all over the world well sally gardner in oregon in the us has sent on a fish i don't know if it's a fish and chip or a fish restaurant and it's called the lunar sea Fish House, otherwise the Luna Sea Fish House, which I really like. And then Sean O'Reilly sent us a lovely picture of a tailor's in Belfast called So It Seems, S-E-W, It Seems, S-E-A-M-S. Very, very clever. Have you got some more there? I've got Laura McCarthy from Sydney in Australia, tells us of battles between Thai restaurants like Bowtie, B-O-W-T-H-A-I, and Titanic.

Oh, dear. I'm not sure I'd want to call a restaurant and give you that sinking feeling if you go to the Titanic, T-H-A-I-T-A-N-I-C, as well as two excellently named maternity wear stores. One is called From Here to Maternity and another's called A Growing Concern. Excellent. Excellent. And finally for this week, Darren Fote of LA threw a tattoo removal clinic into the mix for us. What Were You Inking? Which is brilliant. I love that one. Please do keep them coming. I think we said we'd pick our favourites. So keep sending them in and we will crown the punniest shop name in all the world in a couple of weeks. Now we've got some questions.

Summer greetings from Ottawa in Canada, the capital of Canada, one of my favourite cities in the world. I'm a big fan of your podcast and I wanted to share one of my favourite punny business names. Oh, Haute Couture. O-A-T Couture.

It's a cafe in Ottawa, also in Almonte in Ontario, that serves all sorts of oatmeal. Speaking of porridge, where does that word come from? Yes, Haute Cuisine, what a Scotsman calls porridge. I've seen it written as porridge, P-O-R-A-G-E as well, as P-O-R-R-I-D-G. Shannon Mitchell wants to know all about porridge. Well, the A-G-E thing is quite interesting, actually, because it's an alteration of pottage. So porridge is an alteration of pottage.

It happened around the 16th century. And that in turn comes from the French potage, something put in a pot. And the porridge that we know today, you know, the oatmeal in milk, et cetera, that is first mentioned in the 1640s. So that's where that comes from. But also in Britain, we used to use porridge to mean prison. And any slightly older British listeners will know that there was a fantastic series called Porridge set in a prison with Ronnie Barker and Richard Beckinsville. Absolutely brilliant. Anyway, that use of porridge, obviously porridge is a typical prison food, but it might also be a pun on the use of stir because stir was a slang

term for a prison. And that in turn comes from the Romany word stirbin, meaning a jail. So it might be a punning reference to the stir. If you're in prison, you're in the stir. Lovely message here from Natalia Murzua, who dwells in New York, who says lovely things and then has a question following on from our two flower themed episodes, which she says are among her favourites. In Edelweiss, you mentioned the origins of parsley, rosemary and thyme. But I have a question about sage. In English, was sage named for the adjective meaning wise, or did the adjective come from an association with the herb? With love, Natalia.

Actually, they're not linked. They have travelled in parallel throughout English. Yes, they both come from Latin. And the sage that is the aromatic herb or plant comes from the Latin salvia, meaning a healing plant. And that in turn comes from salvis meaning safe. And it was known for its kind of cleansing properties and various medicinal cures. So that's where that one comes from. And sage meaning profoundly wise goes back to another Latin word, sapire, which simply means to be wise and knowledgeable. So yeah, two very different origins there, but both Latin. So intriguing. You are so full of stuff, Susie Den. Are you full of three words that we are not familiar with that you particularly like you want to share with us today funny you should mention that yes i do have my trio for you today um so the first one i just think we all should have one of these and i'm sure most of us do a lectory lectory l-e-c-t-o-r-y, you can probably guess at this one. It's simply a place for reading. So it's a little place where you can hide away and make that your one activity, which I really like.

Oxiphonia. If someone is being oxiphonic, their voice is being excessively shrill. So you can say, stop being so oxiphonic or stop with that oxyphonia excessive shrillness of voice it's never a good sound is it and this is a lovely one i think for uh for anyone i think you'll like this one charles as well i hope consonance so you probably know senescence means growing old um linked to senility also linked to a senator because the first senators were said to be old and wise men. The jury's out on that one. But consonance is growing old together. Oh, I like that. Yeah, I like that one too. Well, I hope we are allowed that.

I hope so too. Consonance between us. Yeah. I may not live much longer though, because I have my children and grandchildren living with me at the moment and they are driving me mad because they are leaving the lights on. Why do young people do this? Do your children do this? Oh, you remind me of my dad. Oh, I can't bear it. They don't know how to turn a switch off.

They turn it on, and they leave it on. They leave the room, they leave it on. And more than that, they can leave the radio on in a room where there's nobody there. And they can actually leave the television and the radio on simultaneously in the same room with the lights on, and nobody is in the room. They go up to bed leaving the lights on downstairs what is is there a word for people like this maybe there should be leave that one with me yeah so they're being profligate with your electricity thoughtless they don't mean any harm i don't think it just never occurs them anyway i love i love those words.

I particularly like oxyphonic. So thank you for your trio. I've got rather a special poem for us this week. It's a very short one. And believe it or not, it's a limerick. And it's a limerick by Edward Lear that has only just been discovered. Edward Lear, a Victorian writer and artist. He taught Queen Victoria a drawing, but he wrote these wonderful, he didn't invent the limerick, but he popularised them

with collection after collection of amusing limericks. And we thought we'd seen them all, but somebody discovered one in a piece of correspondence tucked inside the back of a book, definitely by Edward Lear. It's his forgotten limerick. And I'm sharing it with you as a Something Rhymes With Purple exclusive. There was an old man on a bicycle whose nose was adorned with an icicle. But they said, if you stop, it will certainly drop and abolish both you and your bicycle.

I love that. That is absolutely brilliant. We don't have many exclusives on this show, so I'm very happy about that one. I hope you are too. And thank you for listening. And as always, do get in touch with us. We love it and we do read everything. It's purple at somethingelse.com. Something Rounds with Purple, as always it's a something else production produced by lawrence bassett and harriet wells with assistance from steve ackerman ella mcleod jay beal and well there's no chance of him being oxyphonic because we just never hear from him anymore do you mean gully