Something Rhymes with Purple - Horripilation

Episode Date: July 7, 2020

From elite sports to class systems, it’s a hairy episode this week as Glyes and Susie delve into the history of hair which prompts Gyles to spill all on his past life’s involvement with the Porn industry. Via the astronomical, tribal and in some cases very bloody history of hair, you’re in for some fascinating tales or should that be "(pig)tails"... We’ll also be hearing Susie’s trio of words for the week and Gyles sends us off with a powerful poem. If you would like to ask Gyles & Susie a question, get in touch at [e-mail]. A Somethin’ Else production. Susie’s trio: - Bobbins: rubbish or nonsense - Indread: secret inner dread - Inadvertist: someone who consistently fails to notice what is going on around them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Giles before you say anything I have genuinely thought over the last few weeks that I really like you with longer hair well it's fortunate isn't it because I've not been able to cut it no but it really suits you there's a slight don't take this the wrong way Dick Van Dyke look about it thank you very much I do take it the wrong way I think Dick Van Dyke is nearly 100 years years old. No, but he's got an amazing head. He has still got a lot of hair. He does have a lot of hair and it really suits you because normally you're shaved-ish. I am normally shaved because I didn't want people to think that I was attempting a comb over of any kind. But I'm now, now it's growing. It seems to be growing more lustrously than ever. And I've decided not to cut it until I can sit on it. Okay, maybe not so good.

How long have you ever had your hair? My hair was incredibly long when I was little. And I remember the trauma of my first haircut, which was at a department store called Bentles in Kingston. And I wanted the kind of Charlie's Angels look. Do you remember Charlie's Angels? Of course I do. Yeah. And I wanted the kind of flick it just just didn't really go particularly well for me so i grew it longer again but i should say if people haven't guessed already that we wanted to talk about hair for this episode because it's

been such a preoccupation for many of us during lockdown we'll come to the realization that we are not only incredibly reliant upon teachers um for those of us who've had to homeschool, but also upon hairdressers. And many of us have resorted to wielding the scissors ourselves or asking a fellow family member or children to cut things for us or just to let it all hang out literally. And I think we've both gone for the latter option. We have. I wouldn't risk letting my darling wife near me with a pair of scissors

because she might decide that enough is enough. I know she feels enough is enough, but she might actually do something about it. So I've not been to the barber. Actually, what does our hair say about us? I mean, has hair been significant? Is there language? Well, hair is, I mean, throughout history,

it's had all sorts of associations, whether they're military, you have to think of the, you know, the crew cut, for example, sexual. If you think about Samson and Delilah and how Samson's strength and sexual prowess really comes from his hair when Delilah cuts it all off, he's just, you know, he's impotent pretty much in every single way. Religious connections, if you think about the tonsures of priests and monks. I mean, so many different connections throughout history. And also many of our words have hair secretly hidden in their history,

which we can perhaps come to later. Don't rush on. Before we, can we unpack some of that before we go on? Military. You mentioned crew cut. Yes. That I think of as an American, like sort of standing up on end, very short. What is the origin of the crew cut? Is it American military? Where does that

come from? No, well, I think of it as being associated with military, but actually in terms of its etymology, first record is from the 1930s in reference to the boat cruise at Harvard and Yale. So you're right about the American connection. But yes, not explicitly military at the beginning. And there's the buzz cut as well, isn't there? But that's a slightly different, I think. What's the buzz cut? The buzz cut is, I think,

from the sound of the barber's clipper. I'm going to look up a definition of the buzz cut for you. And has that got a military association? No, possibly not. Although it'd be interesting to hear from those in the military as to what they have to go for these days. So the buzz cut is the sort of short haircut and it's quite bristly, it says here. Definitely American and yes, possible military connection there. But yes, I've personally never

had a buzz cut, but I imagine it comes from the clippers. Of course, there are tribal associations too. I think of the, when I was a child, we used to have films on television that were called cowboy Indian films. We wouldn't call them that now, but in which they featured Native Americans, the Mohicans. I remember a movie called The Last of the Mohicans

in which there was a Mohican style, a kind of shaved around the sides and a bit in the middle standing up and saluting. Yeah, Daniel Day-Lewis. Yeah, so that was based on James Fenimore Cooper, wasn't it? His novel, The Last of the Mohicans. And that, you're right, it's from North American native people. He spoke Algonquian. Isn't that interesting? Daniel Day-Lewis, who was at school with me, but that's neither here nor there. I don't think he could play that part now. But are there other haircuts associated? I think of the Mohican haircut. Well, religion, we talked about the religious haircut. So tonsure actually goes

back to the Latin for shearing. So it was all about shearing sheep originally. That's the little bald bit in the middle. Exactly. It's supposed to be like a halo? Well, a lot of people have made that analogy, but if you look at the history of it, it's more a renunciation of fashion. So there are so many associations there, we've talked about it, those kind of tribal associations. Well, one tribe, if you like, and I'm not speaking necessarily about ethnicity, but were slaves. And so slaves were traditionally made to completely shave their heads to denote their low status horrendously. So this is looking back to antiquity rather than more modern slavery.

Either way, hideous, as opposed to the kind of, you know, the lush locks of their owners. And early monks might have styled themselves as kind of slaves of Christ. So, you know, it was demonstrating their obedience to God. That's one theory that it was just all about showing that they were humble. Your right hair does say it all. I'm thinking now suddenly of the Roundheads and the Cavaliers at the time of the English Civil War. And Cromwell's people, known as the Roundheads, they had short hair, didn't they? and Cromwell's people known as the Roundheads they had short hair didn't they yes they did and interestingly both Roundhead and Cavalier were insults so Cavalier was something that was

first of all it says it's linked to the Latin cabalus meaning a horse so it was linked to chivalry but it also became associated with kind of foppery and people who just, you know, were highly embellished and a bit of a dandy, which they thought the king's men were. And eventually the king's men actually liked that term. So they adopted that. And roundhead likewise was a term of abuse towards Cromwell's parliamentarian troops. And they too thought, oh, we'll have that. So it's all examples of epithets that were kind of used against people and then picked up by themselves. And the cavaliers, the king's people, they did wear wigs that were very fancy, and that went on for quite a while. I mean, people wore wigs for a hundred years or more.

Wigs were everything. I remember, you know, the wonderfully esoteric Brewer's Dictionary, A Phrase and Fable. We should talk about that actually in one of our programs because it's the most brilliant reference book, but totally random on occasion. But Brewer himself in writing A Loft About Hair writes a personal note that his mum mentioned, his mother mentioned how in order for her to have her proper hairdo before going out in the evening, her maids had to step up on a ladder to reach the top of her hair because she had so much extra hair, whether it was wigs or extra locks attached, it just reached such a height. And that was the tradition. That's where we get the idea of a big

wig from. It was the elite. Very good. And of course, people do still wear wigs for special occasions. Barristers in certain courts and judges wear wigs were very obvious and not very good. I do remember there were two people that older listeners, British older listeners will recall. There was a man called Michael Miles who had a game show and he was a contemporary of Huey Green. And he wore a wig and I remember meeting him and being totally, I was fixated by the wig, particularly because it was getting glued on. It was a very hot day. And the glue began to sort of dribble down the front of his forehead. And that happened to me.

And later date, I thought, oh, dear, this can't happen again. And I was sitting next to a journalist called Godfrey Wynne. Have you heard of him? Isn't that tragic? He was more, in his day, he was more famous than Piers Morgan. Have you heard of Piers Morgan? I have. There you are. So he was a journalist like Piers Morgan, and he wrote a newspaper column, and he was hugely famous, hugely famous. Anyway, I sat next to him at lunch, and it was a very hot day, the Dorchester Hotel. And not only he was so hot, he began scratching his head. And as he scratched it, the wig began to move about and the heat. And by the end of the lunch, his face was covered with glue.

His wig was skewed. It was ghastly. Oh dear. What's intriguing is that my wife has made an appointment with the hairdresser. I'm going to pop into the barber. Why is she going to a hairdresser? Why am I going to a barber? I know what a hairdresser does. They dress hair. What does a barber do? Well, the barber originally were razor surgeons, if you like. So the history of the profession is pretty bumpy and it's pretty bloodthirsty because up until around the 1900s um barbers wielded the knife

as much as they wielded the scissors so they would do things like they would do routine surgery in dentistry so they'd lance abscesses and pull out decaying teeth and sometimes they would set broken bones um amazingly but above all he was a cutter so he essentially drew blood and this was seen you know it was like an essential method for balancing the bodily humors was to draw blood and so he used a sharp knife and he would he would place bowls of the red stuff from his clients in the shop window as a sign of his credentials. But you know, outside the premises, I'm sure a lot of people know this, the now famous barber's pole. I don't know if this is the same globally, but certainly in Britain,

they're striped in red for blood and white for the bandages applied afterwards. So when you see the red and white pole, that's what it goes back to. Very good. Sweeney Dodd, the demon barber of Fleet Street. Very good. Yes. That's a bit horrific. So I think hairdressers, that's the slightly more recent term. But, you know, there's so many, if you think about it,

there's just so many different terms for different types of haircuts there have been over the years. So you've got the barnet, which is, you know, well, I suppose that's more just hair anyway, isn't it? Isn't it? That's rhyming slang. Barnet for hair? Yes. But I get, and I ask for a short back and sides. I used to, which is opposite, short back and sides. But people go and ask for a bob. What's a bob? A bob has been used for anything kind of cut down or, you know, bobbed for quite a long time. But the other idea with bob is that it's been applied to similar things to a blob. So something kind of round, like a bob or a blob of

glass. So a bob haircut you could think as being sort of fairly round on the head and quite short. So I think that's where it comes from. The mullet is a bit of a a mystery so the mullet is you know famously sported by german footballers it's probably an extension of mullet head which was an insult for a stupid person but you know quite why it was applied to that hairstyle where the hair's cut really short at the front and sides and left long at the back we don't know but the beastie boys the us hip-hop group have said that they coined it or certainly popularised it. So who knows? But I don't ever go for a mullet, Giles.

I don't think you would. I don't think I will. I don't really mind what my conch looks like. Conch. That's a word for head, isn't it? Not hair. But where does conch come from? Conch is interesting.

I wonder if conch goes back to, because it's the nose originally, isn't it? Of course it is. Your conch is your nose. Your conch is your nose. But is it also your head? Yes, I get it. I got bopped on if conch goes back to, because it's the nose originally, isn't it? Of course it is. Your conch is your nose. Your conch is your nose, but is it also your head? Yes, I get, I got bopped on the conch. Yeah, if you're off your conch, you're a bit crazy, aren't you? But I think originally, it was applied to, it was definitely applied to the nose and it goes back to the French conch, Q-U-E, meaning a shell. So possibly your nose looks a little bit like a shell, who knows? But

if you are conked out you've been punched on the nose or the head when my mother went to the hairdresser she went for a perm i think that's short permanent wave yes and that's a sort of 1950s or maybe even earlier yeah our poems were all the rage though in this in the 70s and 80s, weren't they? So yes, short for a permanent wave. And that goes back to the early 1900s, the word itself. So yeah, don't ever have a permanent wave either. When you were a little girl and you had that long hair, did you have it in pigtails ever? Yes, I did have it in pigtails, just because they look like the tail of a pig. I think that's where that comes from.

And similarly, ponytail, pigtail, ponytail. Ponytail. I still have ponytails quite a lot. So, yeah, but originally, pigtail was tobacco twisted into a thin rope or a roll, so only later was it applied to hair. Goodness. Hmm. Sorry.

If I were to do that one. But, yeah, so you think about all the different styles. But as I say, maybe we can come back to this. All the words in English that are linked to hair. They may well surprise you. I'm just going to leave you with one of them, which is the word toilet. So do you remember that toilet originally began with the French toile and toile was a piece of cloth and it was particularly a piece of cloth that was hung over your head. and there is the most brilliant quote in the OED about the toilet which always gets kids sniggering because originally you would wear a toilet on your head and let me see if I can find

this for you the ordinary citizens this is from 1714, the ordinary citizens' wives and daughters wear a kind of toilet on their heads with a long fringe which covers their faces and drives away the flies like horse trappings. So, toilette. Toil is a linen cloth. A toilette is a small linen cloth. And that's the origin of it. A piece of cloth floating over your head. Yes. So toilet was then the place where you went to adjust your headdress. And then eventually it was applied to other things that were kept in that room, including, you know, what we would now call a loo. Great. Well, this is Something Rhymes with Purple, the hairy edition. We'll take a quick break. See you in a moment. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic. Hi there. We'll take a quick break be automatically sent to your matches.

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no air in space. It's empty space. So join me every single day alongside great comedians from around the world, including Andy Zaltzman, Nish Kumar, Tiff Stevenson and Will Anderson. Good luck to you. Susie, you say there are lots of words that have a connection with hair, that are words we wouldn't think of having connection with hair. Yes. Give me some examples. Oh gosh, I'm giving an eclectic collection.

So there's comet, which goes back to the Greek for a long-haired star, which is exactly what it looks like. Oh, a comet that flies across the sky. Oh, that's ingenious. I like that. It's nice, isn't it? Cometes. And similarly, the cirrus cloud, that goes back to the idea of a curl or a ringlet um that's the origin of that one so if you see a cirrus cloud in the sky um it looks like a curl like tuft or a fringe or a tendril so you know it looks very wispy doesn't it it does look like a lock of wool

a cirrus cloud um so that's that one what else can i give you there is well if you address someone originally you would actually sort their hair out oh um you would dress their hair so you also like saluting somebody now to say i'm addressing you meaning i'm speaking to you that began the origin of that word is to address one's hair well it emerged pretty much at the same time the two meanings so it was one of the first meanings of address it didn't necessarily all begin with that but it was the idea of paying attention to someone and in this terms of you know in this case it was quite a literal thing one that i really like is horrible and horror and words from those yeah so they if you heard

of horripilation no okay so horripilation is a technical term for your hair standing up on end. Oh, I like that word. Say it again. Horripilation. I wonder if that ever actually happens. Well, cats have horripilation all the time, don't they? Oh, you see it, yes. And yes, my hair generally does stand on end, either when I'm really cold or when I'm quite scared. end, even either when I'm really cold or when I'm quite scared. Anyway, that goes back, all of those go back to the Latin horare, which means exactly that hair standing on end. So a horrible experience

with literally a hairy one. Oh, that's amazing. This is why people have been thinking, been listening to this episode, why am I listening to this? Why on earth am I listening? There's Susie going on, then child's interrupting now and again what's what's going on here now you know why horror and horrible in that origin is a hair raising experience how amazing and is that greek latin that's latin that's for the romans yeah so it goes back to ancient rome gosh and that's why we talk about a hairy experience or hair raising experience and we've talked before about the hair of the dog as well haven't we originally it was an ancient remedy

where you would pluck a hair from a dog that had bitten you and you would make a poultice out of it and apply it to the wound and that was then later applied to alcohol i've got a vague memory of the word capricious having something to do with mountain goats but it's also got something to do with hair not mountain goats although well actually mountain goats do come into the story so originally capricious goes back to the italian capriccio which meant hedgehog head so again it was about hair standing on end so if you were capricious originally you were probably kind of quite scared rather than whimsical. But because of the mountain goat that you mentioned, it became associated with capering about and being

quite frisky. And that's where the kind of jumping from one idea to the other came from, that meaning of capricious. Do you ever have bad hair days? That's another phrase that's gone into the Oxford Dictionary. I'm afraid at the moment every day is a bad hair day. Yes. Well, it's quite interesting that hair has become so wrapped up with our sort of soul and spirit that we speak of a bad hair day not only as being one way hair looks bad, but also where you're actually feeling quite dejected because nothing goes right. And we've traced that back to the 1980s.

And I remember being in Oxford University Press when people found an earlier record of it. I think they'd got a record from the 1990s, and they found one from the 1980s. And I remember thinking, what, it must go back way earlier than that. But anyway, yes, they've been with us for a while. Bad hair days, not so good hair days, I think.

About 50 years ago, the early 1970s, I was involved in a group of people who were investigating seriously the problems of pornography. And we did a kind of survey of the pornographic industry in Britain. And I was taken to visit a studio where they were making pornographic films. And I was introduced there to a word I'd never heard before. Oh, I think, can I guess? Can I guess? Yes. Fluffer. No, Merkin. Oh, Merkin. You can tell me about Fluffer in a second. Oh, I'm definitely not going to tell you about Fluffer. You must. The Merkin was a pubic wig. And these were low budget movies. Pornography was low budget.

I don't know if it still is. I've not really given it much thought since all those years ago. I got more than enough in that big year that I was spending studying pornography. But they had these Merkins out because they had blonde Merkins and auburn Merkins and ginger Merkins of every kind. of every kind. And so that the artists, the same artiste who could appear in different scenes as a different character, because you were only seeing, mostly you were seeing... From the waist down. You were seeing their, as it were, private parts. Their face was neither here nor there. Yes.

What is the origin of the word murkin? I literally just looked this up for you because I genuinely didn't know. Well, actually just looked this up for you because I genuinely didn't know. Well, it made me smile. It's either a variant of a dialect word, malkin, which meant a mop or a bundle of rags fastened to the end of a stick for cleaning out a baker's oven. Don't try that with your malkin. Or a pet form of the female forename Mary, because sometimes the nickname for Mary was Marykin. But what Mary has got to do with Merkins, history doesn't tell. Out of interest, what is or was in this context a fluffer? Damn it. I just don't know why I mentioned this. You brought it up.

Well, a fluffer, I'm going to put this euphemistically, in the porn industry, a fluffer is someone who prepares the man before he goes on. Ah. I use prepare, you've mystically. Of course you do. But here also, if you look in the OED, it's got that sense, someone who stimulates the man before he goes on. But it's also a worker on a railway system employed to clear the track of any rubbish.

So be careful not to confuse the two. Oh, my, oh, man, it's a fluffer. Yes, works on the railways. It could go horribly wrong. It could go horribly wrong. Oh, dearie me. Well, there we are. Edited highlights, golden moments.

But it's all educational. It's all educational. Enough of Merkins. We must remember this is a family-friendly podcast. In fact, speaking of family-friendly, let's have some family-coined words, because people have been writing to us, haven't they, about those? Oh, yes. We've had so many of these.

Because we wondered a couple of weeks ago, didn't we, which words people regularly use in their family, but that aren't used anywhere else. So Sharon Griffiths has said that many moons ago during trips to the supermarket, her then three-year-old asked her dad if he needed any face sharpeners. She's now age 40, but razor blades are still called face sharpeners in their family, which I think is lovely. Great phrase, actually. Laura in Oxford, their favourite family word coined by their two-year-old is jumpoline for her trampoline and fairy tales

for her pigtails, which is lovely. Really nice. What's the origin of trampoline? That's a very good question. Okay. I have my... Trampoline. Jumping up and down on the trampoline. Is it like hoover, one of those words that was the name of a product that has come into the language? No. It's from the Italian trampoli, meaning stilts. So originally in Italian, you know, I've never known this. This is a great find for me.

An Italian trampolare meant to go on stilts. So that's quite cool. So it's all the idea of being high up. I love that. Goodness. Trampoline. Very good. So there we are. idea of being high up. I love that. Goodness. Trampoline. Very good. So there we are.

This is the joy of this programme. We learn things. Oh, we've got one more of these. Yes, go on. So we've got Bev Rutter from Hampshire who loves discussing the podcast with her twin sister, Jo Dodds. And she's emailed in to say

they do an Alfie in their house. And this comes from the lovely Shirley Hughes book, Alfie's Feet. I love the Alfie books. Alfie goes to buy new wellies, then puts them on the wrong feet. So doing an Alfie in their house is to put the shoes on the wrong feet. And then from doing an Alfie, Kevin Brackley tells us about doing a Ria in their family. If anyone burned something they were trying to cook, they said they had done a Ria, which is from a BBC two program, Butterflies, where Wendy Craig plays a character called Ria who always burned the family dinner.

And finally, Fiona Lansdowne called boiled eggs, bald eggs, because they are, that's a bit of an egg corn. I love that one. We also heard from the Dance family in Derbyshire who say, we love your podcast and our 12-year-old Florence is especially enjoying it as she's an avid reader. Florence, forget the Merkin bit, darling. We'll move on. Florence has asked, what left in the lurch means? What is a lurch and where would you find it?

Actually, these are very good questions. Thank you, Tamsin, Gary, Florence and Polly in Derbyshire. That's brilliant. and Polly in Derbyshire. That's brilliant. Well, it actually goes back to a game, a French game that was called Lourche, L-O-U-R-C-H-E, which was a game that resembled backgammon. And this would be played in the 16th century. So we're going back a very long way. And if in the game you were in the Lourche, you were in a situation in which you were probably going to lose. So if you've been left in the lurch, basically you had someone who was enormously ahead of you and the loser might then score nothing. So you used to be able to save the

lurch as well. But that's where it goes from. And as you say, it comes from, it's a very good question. Can we squeeze in one more? This is from Barbara Wheatley. Hello, Susie and Giles. Love the podcast. Aren't words wonderful? Yes. I grew up in the Lake District, and we use a term to describe when you go over on your ankle or on a cobblestone, perhaps. We say we have cockled over. My husband in Midlander thinks it's ridiculous, and I've made up the expression. Can you arbitrate, please? I know it to be a real expression. Why? What's the origin? Gosh, there's so many different meanings of cockles, aren't there? Warm the cockles of your heart and that kind of thing. Well, I have to say that it's not a made up word. You are not mad.

And cockle is in the Oxford English Dictionary, meaning to kind of fall over or stumble, etc. the Oxford English Dictionary, meaning to kind of fall over or stumble, etc. They don't completely know where it comes from, but it might come from the idea of cocking as in, how can I put this in a family-friendly way, sticking up, but particularly sticking up in an insecure or unstable way. So, the idea is that if you cockle, you totter or you wobble. So, you're in danger of overturning. You need a fluffer to help you out you might want to the cockles of the heart incidentally they go back to um cockle meaning uh cocky in french which means a shell particularly the shell of a mollusk which is why we talk about eating cockles today it's a sibling of conch in fact which gave us conker but that's a different

story and the cockles of your heart are so known because they apparently resemble the closed cockle shell or the heart resembles a closed cockle shell that's where that came from susie dent i hope you've got three really wonderful special words for me this week because i have got a truly wonderful poem for you oh well i'll do my best there's one I've spoken about in the past, that if you want to fob off one of your children because you're busy doing something and you haven't really got time to go and play a game with them, so you give a little excuse. One in the old dialect used to be making a whim-wham for water wheels. So it's like, oh, hi dad, what are you doing? Oh, I'm just making a whim-wham for water wheels. It's nonsensical.

It doesn't mean anything. And this one's connected to that. It's a Lancashire word from Britain, meaning rubbish or nonsense. And it's bobbins. And it goes back to the textile industry. And a bobbin was a spindle used for winding and unwinding thread. So because it was small, it was taken as to be something trivial. So you might just say, oh, that's a load of bobbins. Oh, I like that. It's just a bit of bobbins. Oh, I like that. Which is polite. Bobbins. And then in dread, I quite like, obsolete verb from the OED. To in dread is to feel a secret dread of something you can't actually quite articulate it. Oh, that often happens to me. Dread something in secret. Yes. Oh no, but I wake up at five in the morning with in dread.

Yes. A secret. I can't work it out. Why am I feeling so anxious? I've got nothing to be anxious about and yet I am. Okay. Have you got a third word? I have. If you are someone who consistently fails to take notice of things around you, you may be a daydreamer or that's putting it nicely, or you may just be somebody who just literally is unobservant. You can call yourself

an inadvertist. An inadvertist, one who is forever failing to take notice of things. Yeah. I'm afraid my wife thinks I'm one of those, but only because I'm so self-absorbed. Those are three very good words. Yes. Thank you. I've been thinking this week, and this leads to my poem, about Mae West. I was thinking about her. She is a film star. She began in the 1920s and she went right on to the 1960s.

She was a remarkable lady. Sex was her calling card. She was a strong woman, a pioneering woman in the entertainment and movie industry. She finds her way into the dictionary. There is a Mae West. What is it? It's a life jacket, isn't it? It's a life. Yeah, it's a life jacket. Yeah, I think. Because she had a big bosom. Because she was quite pneumatic. Let's put it that way. That's why it's called a Mae West. That's not why I want to celebrate her this week. I want to give you a poem that she wrote when she was just 15 years of age. Oh, wow.

Mae West will be known particularly to our listeners in North America. She wrote most of the films she appeared in. She wrote her own material. What's the most famous line from her movie? I know, I was just trying to think of that and I can't remember. Tell me her famous quote. Why don't you come up and see me sometime? Yes. That's the line.

That's how the line ends up in the movie. I mean, she's also famous for saying, you know, is that a gun in your pocket? Are you pleased to see me? Yes. But come up and see me sometime is the famous line. And it was censored. And the film is She Done Him Wrong. And the famous line had its wings clipped by the censors. As she originally wrote it, it should have been delivered. Why don't you come up sometime and see me? Make it Wednesday.

Wednesday's amateur night. Isn't that a great line? She was a remarkable lady. Anyway, here is the poem that Mae West wrote when she was just 15 years of age. And the poem is called Cave Girl. I got my smile from the sunshine. I got my tears from the rain. I learned to dance when I saw a tiger prance and a peacock taught me to be vain. A little owl in a tree so high, he taught me how to wink my eye. I learned to bill and coo from a turtle dove and a grizzly bear taught me how to hug. But the guy that lived two caves from me, he taught me how to hug. But the guy that lived two caves from me, he taught me how to love.

Wow. That's quite something, isn't it? Charming. Age 15. It's witty. He taught me how to love. Isn't that sweet? Yeah, it is.

It's a great line, actually, because you expect something else after it and then you're left with that hanging and it makes you think. Thank you, Mae West, for that. If any of you listening have good Mae West stories, do feel free to share them with us. You can tweet think thank you may west for that if any of you listening have good may west stories do feel free to share them with us you can tweet us you can email us at purple at something else.com obviously we can't answer every question but we'll try our best and do please spread the word recommend us to friends put out nice messages about us we'd love

some more reviews very much appreciated if you can if you can possibly find the time something rises purple is a Something Else production. It was produced by Lawrence Bassett with additional production from Steve Ackerman, Harriet Wells, Grace Laker and Gully. Oh, Gully, where's your merkin? Oh, Gully, I've just realised where your merkin is. You're wearing it round your face.