Something Rhymes with Purple - Merry-go-sorry

Episode Date: August 17, 2021

Roll up, roll up and scream if you want to go faster!  This week Gyles and Susie take a spin on the carousel (or should that be merry-go-round) as they waltz their way through the general hoopla of fairgrounds and carnivals. They marvel at the ironic profession of the inventor of candy floss, they toss away the notion that coconuts are shy, and Gyles reminisces about his father’s attempts to knock an old woman out of her bed. Strap in, it’s going to be a rollercoaster of a ride.  As always there are lots of your fabulous emails to answer so if you have a question for Gyles and Susie then fire it over to [e-mail] and Bob’s your uncle.  A Somethin’ Else production  Susie’s trio: Merry-go-sorry - a mixture of joy and sadness Edacious - fond of eating Sesquipedalian - a word with too many syllables; or using too many long words Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up y'all it's your man Mark Strong Strizzy and your girl Jem the Jem of all Jems and we're hosting Olympic FOMO your essential recap podcast of the 2024 Olympic Games in 20 minutes or less every day we'll be going behind the scenes for all the wins

losses and real talk with special guests from the Athletes Village and around the world you'll never have a fear of missing any Olympic action from Paris. Listen to Olympic FOMO wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is brought to you by

LEGO Fortnite. LEGO Fortnite is the ultimate survival crafting game found within Fortnite. It's not just Fortnite Battle Royale with minifigures. It's an entirely new experience that combines the best of LEGO Play and Fortnite. Created to give players of all ages, including kids and families,

a safe digital space to play in. Download Fortnite on consoles, PC, cloud services, or Android and play LEGO Fortnite for free. Rated ESRB E10+. Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of Something Rhymes with Purple, which as most of you know by now, if you're a purple person, is a podcast about words, language, meeting famous people, not in my case, but in the case of my lovely co-presenter, Giles Brandreth. Hi, Giles. Hello. I've got a really exciting name to drop this week. Okay. Yeah. That's fine. At some point in my life, I will be able to drop a name or two.

You could, you just choose not to. I just drop them for the sake of dropping them because it's become one of the things that I do. You meet endless, hugely famous people. Most of the famous people I meet were famous 50 years ago and people haven't heard of them anymore. So I'm reviving their fame by chatting about them on our podcast. Excellent. As you know, Giles, I saw my parents for the first time in a very long time this week. And the one question that they asked me to ask you was, where does Giles Brandreth get his boating skills? Because they have been totally addicted to another programme that you do, which is your canal boating series with Sheila Hancock. And as I've never seen it, apologies, I don't get to watch

much telly these days. I thought they were being totally straight. But it seems that, in fact, as you then replied, it has become a bit of a contact sport for you, quite literally. Well, they do say on the canals that it is a contact sport. And interestingly, the professionals do seem to bump into things as much as I do. The challenge is, for those that don't know, this is a television series that's been running in the UK for about 10 years now, featuring a brilliant pair of actors, Timothy West and his wife, Prunella Scales. People internationally will know Prunella Scales probably best because she played Sybil

Fawlty in Fawlty Towers all those years ago, but a true classic. Her husband, Timothy West, is a famous classical actor. And this couple have loved canal boating all their lives and have done it all their lives and made TV series. And then they decided to retire and they handed over the Windlass. Do you know what a Windlass is? W-I-N-D-L-A-S-S? I can't define it. No. So tell me. It's an implement that you use for opening locks. Oh, yes, yes. So essentially what's happened is this. With a friend of mine, Sheila Hancock, who is 88 and proud to be, so I can mention it. She and I have been taking on the mantle of Timothy West

and Priscilla Scales and going canal boating ourselves. And we're making a new series now, which I think begins in September in the UK. And I think it's shown internationally as well. And it's essentially us messing about in boats. And she is incredibly good at it. The problem for me is this. I am a man and I can't do two things at once. And the idea is to chat about what's going on while steering the boat. Well, I can either steer or I can chat. If I try to chat and steer, we then run into the bank or into a bridge or we virtually miss the lock. So people like your parents who've been viewing will have been gently amused. But the novelty, now we've done about eight or more canals, the novelty is beginning to wear off because I really should be better than I am.

I am quite good at opening the locks though. The locks I can do, but the navigation is more of a challenge. Well, it's provided a lot of entertainment. And I have to say today, we're not on the water. We are under the big top today, aren't we? Because we had an email from Brent Calderwood in Atlanta, Georgia,

and we have him to thank for the choice of subject for today's podcast he said i've been writing an article about carnivals in films and while researching british films such as the third man or brighton rock i noticed that us and british english differ in their carnival related terms i'm wondering if you could help me figure out why this might be a good idea for a future episode well it was we thought a very good idea for an episode Brent and we talked about Polari last week which as we will discover is a language often used by carnival workers in the past it felt kind of right to do it this week so thank you for the for the brilliant suggestion. Giles I have to ask first of all how are you with circuses and funfairs do you have a big tradition in your family going?

I'm very interested in the fundamentally in the word carnival, because this can mean so many things to all of us. We can either be talking about the carnivale that you might have in Venice, where people dress up in amazing costumes and go on the canals, or you can talk about a carnival that is kind of at a circus. There are all sorts of different ones. We have to define all this, but I am a circus-holic. When I was a little boy, I did indeed want to run away to the circus.

Almost my favorite program in the 1950s on British television was an American import called Circus Boy. And it was about a child, a boy who worked in the circus. And I felt I had a family link with the circus because my great-great-grandfather was a friend of Phineas Taylor Barnum, the amazing circus owner, in many ways the inventor of the modern circus in America, P.T. Barnum, eventually became part of Barnum and Bailey's Circus. So you are talking here to somebody who is literally a circus nut, a circus freak, a circus... I mean, I just love everything to do with circuses.

We don't need to get into P.T. Barnum necessarily too much here, but I would encourage anybody to find out a bit more about him because as you probably know Giles he was actually a pretty complex individual and he did quite a lot of things that were pretty horrible it has to be said but if anyone's interested there is another podcast out there which is absolutely excellent called you're dead to me and it's a history podcast by my friend Greg Jenner and I'm not just saying this because it's my friend he's my friend it is a really fantastic podcast but he does a whole episode on P.T. Barnum and I learned a lot, a lot, a lot about him from there. So it's definitely worth a listen. But yeah, I was quite surprised actually. I was expecting him to be some sort of amazing, larger than life individual, which indeed he was, but some of his deeds were pretty,

you know, I suppose we're looking back, obviously, but yeah, not particularly moral. But what is interesting is, of course, recollections may vary, and there are several sides to every story. And most of the people listening to this will know of P.T. Barnum through the musical Barnum, which is a, I suppose, a candy floss version of his life story, and a kind of version of it that there was in a movie called The Great Showman, The Greatest Showman, which was hugely popular. And now people go and do sort of sing alongs at it. But as you rightly say, a fascinating character. I have upstairs here at home a book, I think, called Humbugs of the World, which is his account of people that P.T. Barnum admired. And many of

them were hucksters. And as you can say, possibly of doubtful moral probity. I hope that didn't include my great-great-grandfather who featured in his book and who was indeed a friend of P.T. Barnum. But let's get back to circuses and carnivals. What is a carnival? When did the first carnival come about? What is the origin of that word? Well, originally, a carnival was in Roman Catholic countries, the period before Lent. So it was a time of public merrymaking, of festivities. It comes from the medieval Latin carne levamen, meaning shrove tide. in carne levamen, meaning shrove tied. And if you break that down, that is carne meaning flesh and levare meaning to put away. In other words, you would put away meat during Lent. So the meat free fasting of Lent came after the carnival. It doesn't actually come, as a lot of people think,

from carne vale, farewell meat. It doesn't come from that. It comes from the idea of putting away meat, which means that carnival is related to unexpected words such as carnivorous or carnage or even carnation because the flower is quite fleshy in colour, carrion, etc, etc. So that's where carnival comes from. And then it was the merrymaking, the festivities that really took over. And is the, forgive me, does the merrymaking happen before the beginning of Lent or to celebrate the end of Lent? So it's before, you're running riot before the period of abstinence begins. Yes, it's the same idea of Mardi Gras. So Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, the idea is that you eat lots before Lent begins. That's the same idea. That's good. So Ash Wednesday is the beginning

of Lent, and then you have 40 days and nights, echoing the time that in the Bible stories, Jesus spent in the wilderness before the crucifixion. So the carnival is a celebration. That's how it begins. And what period, what are we talking, what century are you talking about? A thousand years ago? I mean... Oh, the word carnival, no, we're talking sort of Middle Ages really, or just a little bit after that. But as I say, it's got its origins in Latin. So that's carnival and a carni, which is a sort of circus or funfair worker, that is a shortening, as you'd probably expect, of carnival itself. And then you've got the circus, which is also incredibly old. You can probably guess where circus began in Roman history. It was the large building, oval building at that point, which was used for the exhibition of horse or chariot races, etc. And the Circus Maximus was the largest and most celebrated in Rome. And that is often referred to specifically as the Circus with a capital C. And when did the two come together? Because I think of them as rather distinct things. I think of a carnival as a celebration. And now you mentioned, I suppose, I think of it as something

that happens at the fun fair, the rides and all of that. But I think of the circus as an entertainment where you went and sat in the round. And I think of the circus coming certainly to Britain in the sort of 1780s. Yes, and it's a very good question. And actually, this brings us back to Brent's email at the beginning where he's talking about the differences between British and US English in terms of the language of circuses. Because you're right, for us, a carnival is a time of feasting, of revelry, of indulgence, etc. And it wasn't until the 1930s that in North American English, it became a funfair or what we would call a circus. And that's when you'll find the first references. For example, in 1931, an oblong of trucks surrounding a village of tents.

A carnival company is coming! Or in the New Yorker from 1939, 60,000 outdoor show people, the carnies, who travel from town to town with carnivals. So fairly late, I would say, that divergence. But for us, as you say, it has almost always pretty much been a circus, which looks all the way back to those public spectacles in Roman history. And there have been British circuses, I think, really since the end of the 18th century, would you say? Yeah, I think during the middle of the 19th century. So that's when European and American circuses began to diverge. But yes, before then, in the middle of the 18th century,

around the 1730s, 1740s, you'll find the first references to circuses and big tops and that kind of thing. And I think the first one was actually in London. And then very soon things started to follow suit in America. But when they diverged, I think it was because of the railroads in the 19th century in the US that allowed circus shows to travel huge distances. And if you think of the horrible treatment of some of the animals, particularly in Barnum Circuses, who had to travel miles, thousands and thousands of miles to be transported to the next venue. And I think that's when things began to differ. So the circus owners in America had extra rings, larger tents, larger tops,

whereas we stuck pretty much that single ring for quite a long time, that single circus, which is obviously what it means, a ring. I remember, because I researched some of this for one of my Victorian murder mysteries, discovering a man called Philip Astley. And I think in this country, he's credited with being sort of one of the founders of the circus. And he was a very skilled equestrian. And he rode on his horse. He stood on his horse.

He rode backwards on his horse, forwards on his horse at great speed and all of that. And it was essentially an equestrian display. And then he developed it more and he got jugglers and tightrope walkers. And, you know, and even clowns began to appear in the circus. We can come and talk about clowns. Oh, this is such a rich area. We must stay calm. So I think of a carnival still as funfair. Circus, you're going to find acrobats, jugglers, tightrope walkers. That's a circus. It's an entertainment. The carnival is a place that you go to and you go on roller coaster rides,

big dippers, dodge them cars, you buy candy floss. Which one shall we go to first? Well, let's start with a fun fair, shall we? Yes. You've established the root of the name carnival, fairground. Why is it called a fair when you go to the fun fair? Fair. So, you know, it's funny, isn't it? Because whenever people want to sort of speak in oldie worldie speakers, they would call it, they will put a Y in fair. But this actually goes back to the Latin, faria. So it didn't start with Old English. It's faria meant a holy day because fairs were often held on religious holidays. So that is where we get the idea

of the kind of fair with stalls and amusements, etc. So you get into the fairground and the first thing my grandchildren like to go on is some kind of a merry-go-round, which I suppose could also be called a carousel. I think of those as rather charming, the ones that are particularly like wooden hobby horses that you sit on the horse and it's brightly painted and they move up and down as you go around. Is a merry-go-round the same thing as a carousel? I think it is. Again, we're talking about American versus British English, really. So, the carousel actually goes back to the Italian carosella. And it's amazing, this one, because it means a little battle, which seems very odd for something that is you know entirely aimed at amusement but actually that is because it's said that the carousels were first invented to train jousters in medieval times

so I'm not quite sure how it how they used to operate maybe it was just a little bit like having to meet the next opponent I'm not sure but carousel from there. And then a merry-go-round is pretty much what we've always called it in British English. And I just love the idea of a merry-go-round. Obviously, it's used in quite figurative ways these days, but it's just, you know, it's something that goes around and that makes you happy. And that gets back to the 1700s. This is not very scientific, but based on a wonderful film with Danny Kaye called The Court Jester, I think the origin of the knights in armour on the carousel is that when they were being trained, they sat on a horse attached to a chain above them, which was then attached to a spike in the middle,

and they would go round in a circle held up on this chain. It would lift them onto the horse. And they would go round in a circle doing their fighting attached to a stick in the middle. And they went round and round in circles. Ah, well, there you go. How amazing. But I mean, this is based on a Hollywood film about medieval knights. So I don't know how accurate it is, but that's my recollection. Sounds very plausible. There's going to be a purple person out there that knows all about this.

So please do let us know because it's fascinating. When you go to the funfair, what do you enjoy? Do you enjoy going? Did you take your... Oh, I love the merry-go-round. Just to finish on that, they're also called whirly-go-round and giddy-go-round, which I love. And I love going on those. And when I go to sort of more sophisticated amusement parks, I suppose, they have those giant teacups that I quite like as well, even at my age. You know, the ones which have got the wheel in the

middle and you can spin it around and you can go as fast as you want. I love those teacups. There's a great line in Shakespeare's Play Twelfth Night about the whirly-gig of time bringing in its revenges. What is whirligig? What's the definition of a whirligig? I think a whirligig, I'm looking this up in the OED now, I thought it was a child's toy and then applied to a flighty woman. Yeah, a whirligig, various toys that are whirled or spun around, such as a spinning top, or a toy with four arms like miniature windmill sails which whirl around when moved through the air and then applied to various mechanical contrivances having a whirly movement and yes applied to flighty women fickle inconstant etc but it started off

as a child's toy in the 15th century so going back quite a long time so just going back to the sort of teacups and those spinning things one of the most embarrassing moments for me as a parent, or at least embarrassing for my children was going on a Peppa Pig spinning ride at a fun fair. And I thought I was quite good at this kind of thing, but as I've got older, I clearly have just become far more cowardly and it started to go really, really fast. And my daughter at the time was about three or four, was absolutely loving it. And I heard the ride operator say something about putting your hands up. And I thought he was saying, put your hands up if you want it to go more slowly.

So I put my hand up. And of course, what he was saying is, if you want to go faster, put your hands up. So I had to stop. saying is, if you want to go faster, put your hands up. So I had to stop. With dozens of people on the ride, I had to ask if I could get off in the middle of a big ride. That's how pathetic I am. Well, I'm so pathetic I wouldn't get onto it. It really was quite fast. Oh, they're terrifying. I remember going somewhere on the south coast on a ride called Wild Mouse. And the horror of this,

it's a roller coaster, and we'll come to that word in a moment. It would take you slowly up a hill and then would career you around a corner. And then it would take you to the edge of what seemed like a precipice. It would suddenly stop and then it would turn and go sweeping down. Oh, it was terrifying. I did it once. I shall never do it again. But my children went back again and again for more rides on Wild Mouse. What is the origin of roller coaster? Where does that come from? When was the first roller coaster? Roller coaster, it's said that it's so-called because the early examples had ramps fitted with rollers, rollers over which sleds would then coast. And it's said that it was first invented at a roller skating rink in Massachusetts.

So that is possibly where it comes from. The early uses date definitely back to that century. So, oh, can you hear the rain in the background? Is that rain? Absolutely pouring here, yeah. 1883, Chicago Tribune is the first reference that I have here. I loathe the roller coaster because it's just too frightening. And I won't even go on a Ferris wheel.

Those gigantic wheels. Why are they called Ferris? Was there a man called Ferris? Or was it Ferris as in iron? Ah, there was a man called Ferris. No, it's an eponym, this one. So George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. is responsible for the Ferris wheel. And I'm like you, not something for me.

He lived from 1859 to 1896. And in the earliest uses, it says, a wheel 250 feet in diameter, swung on an axle, the largest steel casting ever made, resting upon towers 135 feet high that says it all really so yes the big wheel not something that i would love to go on now there's the waltzer as well which is i do quite like the waltzer what is a waltzer um have you never been on one no i don't think so it's like a sort of undulating track and the cut there are sort of lots of cars on them

they go round and round and round and they also spin on their own axis. So they're not unlike the teacups, really. What about the Tunnel of Love? Do you remember that? No. I remember the Haunted House ones. I loved those. But the Tunnel of Love, no.

Well, there were two types. There was the Haunted House, which was quite fun. You went on a little train, didn't you? And sort of cobwebs came over you. And you went round a corner and there were sort of ghoulies came out and screamed at you. The ghost train. The ghost train.

The ghost train. I loved those. Well, there was also the Tunnel of Love. It dates from a more innocent time where, you know, having a little bit of a smooch. It was like being at the back of the cinema. You got into this, often, in my recollection, the Tunnel of Love that I seem to remember going on, and this would be at Dreamland in Margate on the Isle of Thanet. And you got into a little boat, a little motorised boat. It was like a little stream. And there was beautiful music played. And there were lovely flowers. And it was so moonlit and dark. And a little bit of romance was permitted. Not much, because it wasn't a very long tunnel of love. You couldn't get very far, but you could certainly put your arm around your inner Maratha.

Oh, well, that sounds good. What about coconut shires and things? How are you with the stalls? We'll get off the rides now, except there was one more I wanted to ask about, and that was the one where you climbed a lot of stairs and you got to the top of a kind of tower and then you sat on a mat of coconut rushing.

Oh, yes. You know what I mean? A helter skelter. A helter skelter. That's the word. Helter skelter. Where does that come from? Oh, I love helter skelters.

Well, it's interesting. It's one of those what linguists call reduplicative compounds. So if you think of things like willy-nilly, shilly-shally, dilly-dally, all of those, quite often one of the elements doesn't have any meaning on its own. So that's the case with this one. So helter-skelter is probably imitating the kind of clatter of feet moving rapidly or many running feet. And it resembles hurry-scurry, if you like. But each element on its own doesn't really mean very much. In fact, so it could be that neither of them really meant anything on their own,

but they were put together to have that kind of echoic sound of running pitter-patter of feet. What was that technical term you used about them? Reduplicative compound. I love it. I can't even say it. Reduplicative compound. Comp it a redu i can't even say it reduplicative compound ultimate tongue twister reduct i can't even say it one duplicative compound just to go back you could skelter along for a little while for a short while in english it was to dash along or hurry or rush so if you want the one element that never existed on its own that

would be helter but i loved the Helter Skelter. Absolutely loved that. So, yeah, so actually we need to break for a little bit, don't we? Should we break and then come back and talk about all the stalls? Let's break and then go. And then we'll go to the stalls. We've been on the rides. Rather, you've been on the rides because you seem to be ready to go on the carousel, the Medigo round.

Even you're going to risk the roller coaster. The Ferris wheel, both us are a bit nervous about, the waltzer you quite like, but the helter-skelter, you're wild about that. Whereas I, well, I suppose I can cope with the dodgems, just about. Oh, dodgems. Wherever you're going,

you better believe American Express will be right there with you. Heading for adventure? We'll help you breeze through security. Meeting friends a world away? You can use your travel credit. Squeezing every drop out of the last day? How about a 4 p.m. late checkout?

Just need a nice place to settle in? Enjoy your room upgrade. Wherever you go, we'll go together. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamx. Benefits vary by card. Terms apply. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations.

Hey. No, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations. You can now make the first move or not. you could give yourself the ick. That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations.

You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Can I ask you something, Susie? We're going to talk now about the stalls that one might come across at a fun fair or a carnival. I associate these stalls also with a fate, a garden fate. F-E-T-E. That's the French word. And as we discovered the other day, well, in fact, it was on one of our supplements, one of our extras, our Purple Plus episodes, we were talking about how the French language, when you drop the S, sometimes you have an accent. The circumflex accent indicates where it would have gone. So fete, F-E-T-E, is actually short for feast, isn't it?

Exactly right. And that all relates back to carnival and the celebration and the feast? Yeah. So a fete originally in the 15th century was an entertainment on a large scale. So it was a festival, it was a celebration, often took place on saints days, religious holidays. You have to remember that the religious thread that runs through all of these words, holiday, if you remember, is a shortening of holy day. A red letter day is because saints days and religious holidays were marked in red in the Roman calendar. So you have to remember that. So that is where it stayed for a very long time, religious festivals, big festivals and celebrations. But then in around the early 19th century, it became a public bazaar or a similar event. That's what fate began to denote. So typically something held outdoors, you know, the fate that we would recognise today in Britain at least, organised to raise funds for a good cause, stalls, refreshments, that kind of thing. So that began to take over in the early 19th

century. But in the Roman Catholic tradition, the festival of a saint after whom a person is named, so a person's name day, remained a fate um and in fact does to this day so the fate as we now know it has become a more genteel event it's a village fate and there's a television series called midsummer murders which you won't have seen because you don't have no you see oh i see you haven't seen my you haven't seen my i saw that when i was a student that's been going on for a long time, hasn't it? It has been. And they regularly have murders taking place at village fates. It's the sort of place where a murder takes place. You know, somebody's going to a coconut shy

and the coconut sort of kills somebody along the route. But the stalls we're talking about might be at a fate, but we're talking about them at funfairs or carnivals. Let me tell you what my favourite is. I have two favourites. There was one that my father loved, which was called Knock the Lady Out of Bed. And I don't think they do it anymore. I've not heard of it. No, it's probably totally politically incorrect. The idea was that there was a bed, like a bed,

in which a lady in a nightie was sitting. And you were given a ball, quite a hard ball, I think a wooden ball, and if you hit the target, it would tip the bed up, and the lady would fall out of bed in her little nightie onto the floor. But it was a soft floor, and it was charming. Could you knock the lady out of bed? My father adored this, he thought. And he would spend a small fortune. It was sort of sixpence a throw. He could be there and spend 10 shillings. That's, you know, 20 lots of sixpence.

I couldn't, it was quite, you needed quite a hard throw. And I threw, I couldn't even hit the target. But my father threw and threw and threw. And I think it was rigged because very rarely did the lady fall out of bed. And of course, when she did, I assure you, she was really well covered up in her night gown. But it was just the idea, the frisson of knocking the lady out of bed. So I liked that. And I also liked the coconut chai. We know what it is. Why is it called a chai? coconut shy. We know what it is. Why is it called a shy? Yes. So it's got a slightly strange history,

the coconut shy, I have to say. It comes from a rather old meaning of the word shy, which was to throw or to lob something. And as I say, very complicated history. The Oxford English Dictionary will tell you that it probably goes back to a shy cock. Bear with me on this one. Now, a shy cock was in the days of horrible cockfights, it was thought to be a cowardly cock, so one that was not really up for fighting. So the idea of something that wasn't really dedicated or committed was then transferred to the idea of a throw that was a bit of a kind of random, spontaneous throw and not something that was very directed. It's a slightly strange etymology. And

I suppose a coconut shy is a sort of, you know, for fun, you're trying to kind of knock coconuts off with sort of slightly random throws. I suppose that is the connection. But, you know, I suppose quite fittingly, it's a slightly sort of jerky connection between all of them. But I too liked coconut shies. Which of the other stalls you enjoyed? Well, I always loved, this is not really a stall, but I would always have to get some candy floss. I don't know about you. I absolutely loved candy floss. This is called cotton candy in the US. Why is that a different name?

called cotton candy in the US. Why is that a different name? Well, floss for us really denoted the rough silk, which envelops the cocoon of the silkworm. And because candy floss is as light, you know, it's the spun sugar, isn't it? It's so sort of light. For the American imagination, it seemed to inspire them to think about cotton. And for us, we thought about the cocoon of the silkworm. It was just different interpretations, different imaginations and the desire to be different, I think. And the machine, ironically, that made cotton candy was apparently invented by a man who was a dentist, William Morrison. Of course, it's the worst thing for your teeth that you could possibly have. But flossing is good for your teeth, curiously. Flossing is, yes, that kind of flossing. But not candy flossing. What about when you had, did you ever go fishing

when there was a fishing rod and a metal loop on the end and you fished for usually ducks, I think, rather than fish. They were going along a stream and you had to pick up a duck. You won a prize. Yes. I remember all of those. And was that hoopla? No, hoopla was actually throwing hoops, wasn't it? Is that why it's called hoopla? Yes. So you said hoop and then hoopla like that. The phrase we now use, oh, there's a lot of hoopla.

Does that relate to the carnival game of throwing a hoop over the prize? And you never got the prize. You aimed the hoop, you know, over the teddy bear and it always never, because it had to land completely over the teddy bear or the bottle of whiskey. Yeah, they are linked. I'm not quite sure why unnecessary fuss, hoopla in that sense, was kind of somehow inspired by the game in which rings are thrown to encircle one of the prizes. But definitely they are linked. They both come from the same origin, if you like. I'm just looking this up in the OED now just to see when that... Actually, it's interesting. The OED doesn't even mention the kind of unnecessary fuss,

but 1907 was the idea of the game. And yeah, who knows why it took on that sense, but they're absolutely linked. Do the carnival workers have a lingo of their own, people who work on funfairs. They do. And it goes back a very, very long time. So a lot of the language that you will find was inspired by the Roma people. So they've contributed enormously to outdoor public entertainment, to circuses as well, it has to be said. You know, often scorned by larger society, we tend to use the word gypsy really as a catch-all identifier. And if you remember, gypsy came about because the nomadic people were thought to come from Egypt. That is where that came from. And yet central to the Roma world really is community with other

people. It's a sort of life, if you like, of noise and bustle, but also spirit of the community. So I think much maligned really. But yes, they have their own language, which is absolutely wonderful and steeped in history. So we talked about Polari last week. There is a subset of the Roman language that definitely uses or draws on Polari a lot. So you have Bona again, you have Cushti, you have having a deco, taking a look. They talk about denarii for money, jari, which comes from the Italian mangiare, to eat. And that's food, if you want some jari. A gaffe can mean so many different things.

A fairground, a music hall, a ride operator, a fake sideshow exhibit, or even the underwear, apparently, that male cross-dressers wear to conceal their tackle that can also be called a gaff um and honestly i could go on jaz there are just so many different words for um you know for different parts of the funfair i mean in terms of the circus where you will also find this incredible tribal lexicon maybe we should do that another day because we've got so much to talk about we've got so much to talk about.

We have got so much to talk about. And I want to tell you about some of the great clowns that I have encountered. Because when I was a little boy, I collected famous clowns. And I managed to meet the most famous British clown, who was called Coco the Clown, and the most famous clown in the world, who was a Russian clown called Popov. Yes. And I shook his hand. I can't wait to hear that. I mean, to say I shook his hand, I mean, better if he'd, you know, put a custard pie in my face,

that would make it more clown-like. But we're going to discuss clowns. I think we must evoke a whole, also the three ring circus, the smell of the sawdust, all of that, we've got to evoke that. I agree. And it is a different world, in a way, from the carnival. So we've had a carnival. We've had a carnival time today. Thank you for that, Susie Dent. And thank you, all of you purple people, for sending us your questions and queries. Rich correspondence. Let's start with Connie Matheson from New Zealand, who's written in this week. She says, hi, Susie. Hi, Giles. I've always wondered what the origin of the phrase Bob's your uncle is.

Could you help? Well, I think the origin is something to do with politics. But before we get round to the origin, what exactly does the phrase mean, Bob's your uncle? How would we use it? We tend to use it to mean, and that's that, everything's all right. So you would just say, you know, if someone says, oh, we're running out of drink for our party, you'd say, well, I'll just go down to the offy, British for an off license or a pub, and I'll simply pick some up, Bob's your uncle. Job done, sorted. Exactly. And you're right to mention the political connotations because many people believe that Bob and his nephew were the Marquess of Salisbury, who was Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoigne Cecil, and Arthur Balfour, his favourite nephew.

So Arthur was appointed to several political posts in the 1880s. And a lot of them were really puzzling because he'd shown apparently no prior interest in public work. And it's really unlikely that Arthur Balfour would ever have become the politician that he did without his uncle. And he actually went on to become prime minister, thanks, it is thought, to the patronage of his influential uncle, Robert Bob Gascoigne Cecil. And I suppose the fact that the word nepotism derives from nephew makes that link seem all the more neat. But the more likely source is actually the music hall and a song which was basically very, very popular in the early 1900s. And it was called Bob's Your Uncle. Bob's your uncle, follow your uncle Bob, he knows what to do, he'll look after you. And that sort of song and the phrase Bob's your uncle

came into being around the same time, long after Arthur Balfour was PM. So we think the musical theory might just have the edge. I always liked the political philosophy of Arthur Balfour. And indeed, when I was a member of parliament, I kept one of his sayings in a frame on my desk. And Arthur Balfour is the politician, indeed the prime minister, who once said, nothing matters very much, and most things don't matter at all. And I found that very soothing, and it kept things in perspective when all around me were losing their heads. You tweeted something very recently that actually also had a lot of resonance for me. And it was about, I've had something like, I've had a lot of worries in my life and most of them never happened,

which absolutely sums me up. Who is that, Mark Twain? That is Mark Twain. Well, it's attributed to Mark Twain. The great thing about Mark Twain is that a lot of Oscar Wilde's lines in Europe are attributed to Mark Twain. The great thing about Mark Twain is that a lot of Oscar Wilde's lines in Europe are attributed to Mark Twain in America and vice versa. But he was a very wise and witty man, the great Samuel Clements. And he did say, I'm an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened. So you can stop worrying now. Oh, how I relate to that one. Stop worrying.

Stop catastrophizing. Yeah, exactly. That's a great word. That's quite a new word, isn't it? Catastrophize. Catastrophize. No, I think it's probably, well, maybe 20th century. Let's have a look. Yeah, 20th century, 1960s. To conjecture or perceive disastrous implications or scenarios to regard a relatively innocuous situation is considerably worse than it actually is. Yes, that would be me. Hope for the best, expect the worst. Placebo and placate. Margaret Simm has written in to ask if there's a connection between the word placebo and the word placate. Remind us what they both mean.

Okay, so a placebo is usually applied to medicine, isn't it? It's a drug or therapy Remind us what they both mean. sort of blank pills, for example, but because we believe them to be effective and we believe them to be the medicines, the sort of psychosomatic response is a very positive one. So that arose in the 18th century before actually a placebo was a flatterer or a sycophant or a parasite. And that gives you a clue as to its origin because it comes straight from the Latin placebo, meaning I shall please, I shall be acceptable. In other words, if you're fawning and slightly servile, you are trying to be pleasing and then get into the good books of someone. And it is indeed related to placate because the Latin placere meant to please. And we kind of lose the connection because of the hard C and the soft C. And so

it's not regular that they go back to the same one. But to placate someone is, of course, to pacify someone, to conciliate, to please, I suppose, in some way and be less angry or hostile. So they do go back to the same route. So yeah, they are very much linked, Margaret. Yeah, they are very much linked, Margaret. The word placebo just reminds me of the link between my great-great-grandfather and P.T. Barnum, the circus owner that you were introducing at the top of the show. Because the reason that my great-great-grandfather knew P.T. Barnum was that the great circus owner used to consume my great-great-grandfather's products.

My great-great-grandfather was called Dr. Brandreth. He invented Brandreth's pills that cured everything. And when he was a young man, P.T. Barnum began taking these, and they made him feel healthy and vital and full of life. And when he eventually met Dr. Brandreth, he sought him out to thank him for making these pills. He discovered that the pills he'd been taking had been marketed as Brandreth, he sought him out to thank him for making these pills. He discovered that the pills he'd been taking had been marketed as Brandreth's pills, but actually were made by frauds, people who were making counterfeit pills. How fitting. Yes. And so, in fact, he was taking non-real Brandreth's pills. He was taking the equivalent of placebos. They weren't the actual pills. But because he believed they were Brandreth's pills,

they had the effect that was promised by Dr. Brandreth. Isn't that incredible? Do you know what the opposite or the antonym of a placebo is? No. It's a nocebo, nocebo, which means I shall cause harm. And that is very interesting because, you know, they say that the sort of mind, in terms of the mind's attitude to certain illnesses, et cetera, is so important. It is a detrimental effect on health because you expect a negative outcome. That is a nocebo. It's quite interesting, but much more rarely used.

Very good. Oh, have you got three fantastic words for us this week? You always come up with something new, and yet they're always old. New and not always useful. Well, this one, I quite like it. It has obviously a link to the fairground and to a word that we have already discussed. Instead of a merry-go-round, you can have merry-go-sorry. And merry-go-sorry is pretty much a good metaphor for life because it's a mixture of joy and

sadness things go round they're sad they're happy they're sad they're happy that is a merry-go-sorry and that's been around for quite a few centuries so I quite like that one I mentioned candy floss which I love cotton candy I am audacious when it comes to cotton candy. And that means fond of eating. E-D-A-C-I-O-U-S, audacious. And finally, something that I might be accused of with my trio sometimes, you'll know this one, Giles, sesquipedalian. Oh, I do know this one. Sesquipedalian means a word has too many syllables, or if it applies to a document or a speech, it just means using too many long words. Sesquipedalian. And it goes back to the Latin for words that are a foot and a half long. Well.

Which is great. We're going to talk about clowns and circuses in full on another day, but I might end today with one of my favourite poems. It's by Shel Silverstein. It's about Clooney the Clown. I'll tell you the story of Clooney the Clown, who worked in a circus that came through town. His shoes were too big and his hat was too small, but he just wasn't, just wasn't funny at all. He had a trombone to play loud, silly tunes. He had a green dog and a thousand balloons. He was floppy and sloppy and skinny and tall, but he just wasn't, just wasn't funny at all. And every time he did a trick, everyone felt a little sick. And every time he told a joke, folks sighed as if their hearts were broke. And every time he lost a shoe, everyone

looked awfully blue. And every time he stood on his head, everyone screamed, go back to bed. And every time he made a leap, everybody fell asleep. And every time he ate his tie, everyone began to cry. And Clooney could not make any money simply because he was not funny. One day he said, I'll tell this town how it feels to be an unfunny clown. And he told them all why he looked so sad, and he told them all why he felt so bad. He told of pain and rain and cold. He told of darkness in his soul, and after he finished his tale of woe, did everyone cry? Oh no, no, no. They laughed until they shook the trees with ha-ha-ha and he-he-he's. They laughed with howls and yowls and shrieks.

They laughed all day. They laughed all week. They laughed until they had a fit. They laughed until their jackets split. The laughter spread for miles around to every city, every town, over mountains, across the sea, from Saint-Tropez to Mont-Saint-Nez.

And soon the whole world rang with laughter, lasting till forever after, while Clooney stood in the circus tent with his head drooped low and his shoulders bent. And he said, that is not what I meant. I'm funny, just by accident. And while the world laughed outside, Clooney the Clown sat down and cried. Oh, amazing poem. It is an amazing poem by an amazing, an amazing American poet, Shel Silverstein.

Anyway, we'll go clowning one day and we'll explore your, what was that word you told us for an allergy to clowns or a phobia about clowns? A coulrophobia. But that poem is the absolute epitome of merry-go-sorry, I would say. Thank you so much to everybody for getting in touch, as you continue to do. And we're really grateful for everything that you send in. If you do have something you'd like to tell us about or a theme that you'd like to suggest or just any comment really please email purple at something else dot com something rhymes with purple is a something else production produced by lawrence bassett and harriet wells with additional production from steve ackerman

ella mcleod jay biel and well i have to say i'm delighted that this person is back he is back yes thank you collie