Something Rhymes with Purple - Podiuming

Episode Date: August 3, 2021

Happy Tuesday! We must ask, are there many Purple People in the Peri-perineum? It is the perfect way to spend a blursday! Now that we’ve properly exchanged pleasantries- get read… set and go! Because this week we are doing a Tom Daley and diving deep into the wonderfully relevant world of the Olympics! Do you fancy an ancient ritual in honour of Zeus? Given the tight leash on demographics oh so many Olympiads ago, we think… probably not! Are you buffed and oiled and ready for the athalon? Or do you prefer the discotheque to the discus? Regardless of what you need, we are here to answer all of your sporting and ancient athletic quibbles, queries and questions! Elsewhere, we have more name-dropping from Gyles, a lesson in ancient Greek from Susie and, as ever, your Purple Post! If you would like to get in touch with either Susie and Gyles please get in touch with us at [e-mail]. A Somethin’ Else production To buy SRWP mugs and more head to.... https://kontraband.shop/collections/something-rhymes-with-purple Susie’s Trio: Videnda- Things worth seeing Tacenda- Things that you must not speak about Pigsnie- darling or beloved 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. Make your nights unforgettable

with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main We'll see you next time. Annex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes With Purple. This is a podcast presented by my friend Susie Dent, the world's leading lexicographer,

and me, Giles Brandreth. And we rather feel, well, I feel anyway, that we're living in the past, because everything I do seems to be described as 2020. This is because all the things I'm doing are postponed from last year. I'm currently on a tour that was supposed to have begun in 2020. It didn't. So now we're doing it in 2021, but it's still called the 2020 Tour. We had football in Europe called Euro 2020. And now we're coming to the climax of 2020 Olympics. And they should have happened last year, but they're happening this year. Are you excited, Susie Dent?

Very excited. I have so many memories of growing up with the Olympics on the TV and just, you know, all the sprinting greats. I was majorly into sprinting and hurdles. Absolutely loved it. And, of course, discovered sports that I'd never even heard of. And there are a few more added this year, aren't there? There's surfing and skateboarding and baseball are all adding the list now. So it's incredible.

But I have to say, I don't know if I'm the only one that during the Euros 2020, I just for one second had a bit of a blip in my mind where I just thought, are we in 2020? It's that kind of total blurs day feeling, isn't it? Where you actually, particularly because of the pandemic, you just don't know where you are. Is that a word you've just invented, Blursday? No, Blursday was the name given to the total loss of a sense of time during the sort of lockdown period where you literally didn't know where you were. So just explain to me and to anyone who doesn't know how this works, how does Blursday get

into the dictionary and will it be in the dictionary? I doubt that that one will. So as we've discussed before, quite a few Covid neologisms did make their way into the dictionary, including Covidiot. But Blur's Day, I think, will probably stay in the sidelines. But it's, you know, it's a kind of useful word that will no doubt come back. You had Blur's Day famously during the merineum, as they call it, that period between Christmas and New Year.

So, you know, there are times of the year and times of our lives where actually we totally lose track of time and days of the week. Can I ask you, is merineum in the dictionary? And what does that mean? Not yet, not yet. What does merineum mean? So merineum is that sort of limbo period

that straddles Christmas and the New Year. The perineum straddles parts of the body. And Rachel Riley told me the other day that the distance between one Nando's and the other is called the periperineum. I love that. But I tell you, I think words like merineum and blurs day should be in the dictionary because 200 years from now, people reading novels set in the early 21st century or even newspapers from this time may not know what those words mean and will go to the dictionary and say, what was a Blur's Day to people in the 2020s? And they need to be told. Yeah, I think that one hasn't gained as much traction as Merineum. I hold out more hope for Merineum, but it is, you know, obviously it's a humorous coinage. But yeah, it's got every chance if we use it enough. the Olympic Games. Maybe we should start with the story of the ancient Olympics, because I know

it goes back a long time. And explain to me why the Olympics are called the Olympics. Well, they were named because of their location, which was at Olympia. And that was a sacred site, is a sacred site, located near the western coast of the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece. I thought it was an offshoot of the Circle Line, just near between Earls Court and... Was that too? I wonder which came first. Anyway, the Olympics were held every four years between August the 6th and September the 19th. And it was part of a religious festival that honoured Zeus, festival that honoured Zeus, the god Zeus. And the first written records that we have date to 776 BC. And a cook won the only event at that. He was called Coriabus and it was 192 metre foot race called the Stade. And that's where we get the modern stadium because the Stade was an ancient

Roman or Greek measure of length. But yes, so the games were named for their location. And they were so important that historians began to measure time by the four years that were in between the Olympic Games. And they became known as Olympiads. So they were markers of time. We were talking about time earlier. You have to remember that in those Olympic Games, you were only looking at freeborn male citizens, no slaves, no women, and particularly

no married women who couldn't even go to watch. That was the way it was. Freeborn male citizens were the only people allowed to participate. And were they naked? Why have I got it into my head they were naked? Because of a gymnasium having something to do with naked people. Yes. I don't know. I'm not sure if they were naked when they actually ran. That would have been a slight, a slight and a half. But they would have been very buff, I'm sure. And probably well-oiled to show off their physique. We hope they weren't entirely naked. You know, one of my favourite sayings, the actor and dancer Robert Helpman, who went to the opening of O Calcutta, a nude review in the 1960s in London, and came away saying, well, the trouble with naked dancing is that not everything

stops when the music stops. Well, that's exactly what I was thinking. Can you imagine naked racing? Oh, well, anyway, on we go. So we assume they're wearing little outfits. Yes, we assume that. So moving on from that one race, there were various sporting events added. So there was the Diolos, I'm not sure if that's how you pronounce it, it's D-I-A-U-L-O-S, which translates as double pipe. And that was twice around the stadium. So I suppose roughly equal to 400 metres today. There was the Dolikos, which was a long race. That's what that means literally.

And that's probably 1,500 or even 5,000 metres. The pentathlon, which we know from today, the five events. Boxing was added in 688 BC, chariot racing in 680 BC. And then something called pancration, which translates as all force, pancration. And it was a combination of boxing and wrestling with no rules really. It was really dangerous and everything was permitted apparently except biting, gouging your opponent's eyes or attacking the genitals. Otherwise everything went. Can you unpack while we picture this image of these people doing everything but etc. Can you unpack some of the words in all this for us? Begin with the running. You mentioned pentathlon. That's Greek penta is five, isn't it?

Yes. So, athlon, the athlon of pentathlon goes back to the Greek for competing for a prize, because an athlon was a prize. And that's, of course, where we get athlete from today, someone who is proficient in sports, but also takes part in competitive events. So that's the pentathlon. Then you've got the decathlon, which is 10 events, decathlon, et cetera, but all based on that athlon meaning a prize. And words like run and sprint, do they have an interesting etymology? They all come from very different places. So sprint is a Scandinavian origin, actually didn't come into English until the late 18th century, but there's various cognates,

we would say. So similar words in Scandinavian languages. Run is Germanic. So in German, you've got Rennen as well as Laufen. And that has been around in various forms since Old English. So, you know, it's a really good example of just how long these words have been around, but also just the different journeys that they've taken. Sticking with running for a moment, a hurdling. Where does the hurdling, I suppose, come from the word hurdle? And a hurdle is the thing you put up that people have got to jump over. Yeah, I used to love hurdles. Oh, really? Oh, that was my favourite thing. I used to set up little jumps in the garden. Yes, that's

again Germanic. It meant a kind of temporary fence, if you like. But in German, it was a hurder with a normal out. But yeah, that's hurdling. I loved that sport. Go now to some of the throwing events, things like the discus, which I do associate very much with the Greek games. I don't know why. I suppose I can see that figure like a statue of him holding the discus and about to swing it round. Where does the discus come from? That is simply a straight borrowing from the Greek diskos with a K. And you're right, that was one of the events in the ancient Greek sporting list. And disco as in a shape like a disc, looking like a circular disc.

Yes, exactly. And the disco that we go to, if we're allowed to, because we've been double-jabbed of an evening, is that anything to do with the diskos? Yeah, because at a discotheque, basically, obviously, people are dancing at a discotheque, but originally it was a collection of records or a record library. So it was a collection of discs and it was basically on the pattern of bibliotheque, which is a library. But the javelin has nothing to do with jiving and you're throwing the javelin, but you're not throwing some shapes with your jiving.

They're not connected. No, nothing to do with jive. Javel throwing the javelin, but you're not throwing some shapes with your jiving. They're not connected. No, nothing to do with jive. Javelin is of Celtic origin. So yeah, we can add that one to the list as well. What did it mean? Well, it's the same thing. It was a light spear. And then it was a light spear

that was thrown in competitive sport. It's amazing what a melting pot the language is. I know, it take any subject like this and you see just, as I say, the different stories and the different adventures that people have done. And in the early Olympics, was it always one person against one person? I mean, you know, individual runners, individual shot put throwers. I don't know whether they had teams. That's a really good question, actually.

I'm not sure. In AD 393, the emperor at the time who was a christian called for a ban on all the pagan festivals so he ended the ancient olympic tradition and obviously been going on for some time and then they weren't restarted until 1896 and that was in athens and that was all down to someone called Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who was of France, as you might tell from my terrible French accent. And he was dedicated to the promotion of games and sport. He'd visited the ancient Olympic site apparently and thought, okay, this is what we need to revive. And yeah, just, I mean, had real drive and ambition,

I guess, to actually make it happen. And in the early days, not many countries took part, I mean, had real drive and ambition, I guess, to actually make it happen. And in the early days, not many countries took part. I mean, in the 1890s when he began to revive it, how many countries were there? Well, if you think of the rings, the Olympic rings, which are blue and yellow and black and green and red, those are interlocking rings and they represented the five participating continents, Africa, Asia, America, Europe and Oceania. And the idea is that those colours, together with the white background of the Olympic flag, could then go towards the colours of every single nation's flag who were participating at the time. Then there was the Winter Olympics and we've got the Paralympics, which are amazing. So incredible, but that there was a hiatus for such a long time because it was considered pagan. And I think in the first modern Olympics, 13 countries took part.

There were just 43 events and it's grown and grown and grown. I mean, the ones I like are things, odd things like that synchronised swimming. I find that so amusing and slightly ridiculous, but quite fun in its own way. If you could choose, well, if you had to choose, if you were forced to choose one sport that you had to participate in, what would it be? Would it be that? Well, no, it'd be so ridiculous. No, because I don't like going under the water too much. I mean, at school, I used to do running. I mean, I ran from my county once. Too slowly, it turned out. But I did at least run from my county once. And I was very lucky because from an early age, I somehow got

to know Sebastian Coe, who is a double, if not a triple Olympic gold medal winner as a runner. And I remember he once showed me his gold medals. And he told me that he took them to visit schools to encourage young people to take up competitive sport. And he would wear these gold medals. And at almost every school he went to, there was a child who had come up and tried to bite the gold medal, assuming it was a chocolate coin. He said everywhere he went with these gold medals, if he took them off to give the talk and left them on a table, he would see a small child there trying to work out where the gold foil could be peeled away because there was bound to be chocolate inside it. Isn't

that marvellous? Yeah. I think it's pretty impressive to have more than one gold medal, don't you? Oh, I mean, yeah. But when I first met him, when he was in his competitive, I mean, he's still right fit. And amazingly, his hair seems darker now that he's in his 60s than it did when he was in his 20s. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. He hardly ate a thing. And he drank, I would sit down and have a cup of tea. And he'd say, oh, yes, I'd have some hot water, please. And then he would take a small lemon and cut a little slice of lemon and he'd pop that into his tea. And that would be his breakfast. I tell you who else did that, just to add my own name dropping to the list, which will

only resonate with our British listeners. But Angela Rippon did exactly the same thing. That was, she swore by hot water and lemon at the start of her day um before we go because we're due a break in a second I just wanted to come back to marathon that is the last thing in the world that I could do you could not drag me to do a marathon I just would not last I was really good at the first 80 meters of the 100 meters I was as hot as anything and then come 80 meters I would just either be sick or just just flail at the last 20 meters so it never really worked happily is that the same you see it means nothing to me because of my generation I'm brought up in the 1950s and 60s I think of 100 yards and there was a day when I could run 100 yards in 10 seconds. Wow. Yeah, it sounds a lot,

but I think it's not as long as 100 metres. That's what's annoying. It's 0.91 of a metre is a yard. So actually that would have been perfect for me, 100 yards, 80 metres as I say, I could beat anybody and then it all fell apart. Well, you were born too late. You mentioned marathon there. I know that's 26 miles and 385 yards.

Yes, and you know the story, I'm sure. I don't know the story. There's a place called Marathon that I know. Is it like Olympia being Olympic? Well, it's on the coast of Attica. So that's in Eastern Greece. And in 490 BC, the Athenians won. They beat an invading Persian army at Marathon. And there are various historical accounts, one of which describes how the herald Pheidippides ran 150 miles from Athens to Sparta to get help before the battle. And then the legend changed a little bit, and it changed to the story of a messenger running from Marathon to Athens, which was a distance of 22 miles,

with news of the victory, but he fell dead on arrival. And the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 then instituted, I suppose, the marathon as a long-distance race. But fortunately, they based it on the shorter version of the story, which was 22 miles rather than 150. Goodness. In the United Kingdom, from where this podcast comes, and we're very conscious that we have a large international audience, we're very aware, people of my generation are very aware, of the four-minute mile. Because this was a record that nobody had broken until the early 1950s,

something like 1954. And I'm of a vintage that I actually met and indeed got to know a bit the three runners who were most involved with that. Roger Bannister, who was a doctor, and he was an amateur runner. He was still being a doctor at the time. Christopher Chataway and Chris Brasher, they were all involved in this. Some of them were pacers and Roger Bannister scored it. But now it doesn't mean so much because we don't think there probably isn't a mile-long race anymore. It will be the 1,000 metres, will it, or the 2,000 metres?

Yeah, and a mile is always, it's always configured as quite a long distance, really, in the mind's eye. Because for the Romans, it was 1,000 paces marched by troops. So this was mille passus, 1,000 p paces and a stad was one eighth of a mile as i say and that was borrowed as the distance covered by their foot races but what i loved about roger bannister is he said he had learned his running not only for fun but as he scrambled to the nearest air raid shelter during the battle of britain so he would imagine the bombs and the machine gunfire raining on him if he didn't run fast, which is incredible. That's such a great line. And it reminds you of a sort of generation of sports people who were,

in a sense, they were amateurs and they did other things. And it was extraordinary. Yeah, and he finished his shift, took a train to Oxford, and then just went on to reshape the future and the history of running. It's incredible. It's fantastic. And if you met these blokes, they were very modest, actually. It was just one of the things that they had done. And in a way, it was good for them to have other things to do because the problem with being an athlete is that you're, for the most part, you're time limited. Yes, the same for lexicographers, I have to say. Oh no, lexicographers can go on forever. So long as you can tell us that a mile comes from miles, the thousand steps that soldiers took. We're learning something. You can keep teaching us that, Susie Dent, when you are a hundred years of age.

Only hope for that. Should we take a break? And then I want to come back and touch on the verb that everyone really hates, which is meddling. on the verb that everyone really hates, which is meddling. 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

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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 welcome back to something rhymes with purple where giles and i are talking about the olympics which of course we are right in the middle of and i mentioned before the break the verb that really gets on people's nerves actually there are. And of course we always blame this on the Americans as we always do, but there's meddling as in winning a medal and podiuming, which came about just a few

Olympics ago, I think, and really, really rubbed people up the wrong way. I should just say that actually, you know, this is nothing new. I know I'm like a broken record when I say this, but it really isn't new that we take nouns and make them into verbs. We have been doing this forever. Shakespeare famously did it as well. I can deal with meddling. I don't mind that. Although it's a little bit confusing because it sounds like interfering meddling. But podiuming, I have to say, I kind of stopped there. I didn't like that. Did you? I've accepted it all because, as you know, I'm an enthusiast for the work of P.G. Woodhouse, an English novelist, often based in America, who created Jeeves and Worcester and those other characters. And he often turned nouns into verbs.

For example, he would have Bertie Wooster ankling down to the club, to ankle down to the club. You can see his little ankles pattering along the pavement. And I always find that rather attractive. So I think it's quite an amusing way of extending the language. So if you can ankle down to your club, you can certainly medal at the Olympics. Well, yes, I've just looked it up, actually, Giles. And the very first use of appearing on a podium at a public event and podiuming is from 1948. And there's a US newspaper that says, I podiumed as I'd never podiumed before, because Eleanor was next to me. But the idea of finishing in first, second or third in a competition is in the 90s. It is nothing new. But I'll tell

you where medal goes back to, because it's quite a nice one. The medieval Latin medallia meant half a denarius, a Roman coin. And the idea is that there was very little difference in appearance between that half a denarius and a medal. So that's where that one comes from. And a medallion is a little bit later,

and that simply meant a larger medal, a medallion. Very good. Did we touch on arena? Have you told us about the origin of that word? And it goes, I suppose, goes back to the Coliseum and gladiatorial combat, because when blood was spilt and shed, as it so often was, sand would be strewn across the arena in order to soak up the blood. Gosh. Well, look, if you've enjoyed hearing Susie telling us about the origin of all these words associated with sport, athletics and the Olympics. Thank you. But if you have got queries, we will endeavour to answer them. Do get in touch with us. It's purple at something else dot com. And that's something spelt without a G, just a bit perverse. Purple at something else dot com. And we think of our listeners as the purple people and they think of themselves as the purple people, which is then fantastic. I told you, Susie, didn't I, how I was recently filming on a narrowboat and travelling through Cambridge and out of the boathouse ran a young man coming towards me, calling out, I'm a purple person. I'm a purple person, which I think is fantastic. So purple

people do keep in touch. And also tell us tales. If we have any, this would be rather marvellous, if we have any Olympic athletes who are tuned in, who may be perhaps listening to us while training, I don't know if they're doing that in Tokyo, because it's been slightly weird. I do know, having spoken to some of the people who were there during the Olympics, they are finding it quite strange there not being proper crowds in the stadia.

And so though we've been enjoying it on the box, on television, it's been a bit odd for them not having the cheers and the shouting. No, I think the whole thing must be quite a strange experience. And I think it will be very different, but nothing to use a terrible pun will extinguish the flame, I don't think.

There's still a magnificence about the Olympics and hopefully it will still mean just as much. You mentioning puns there leads us nicely onto the people who've been sending us in some wonderful punny shop names. Thank you, all of you, for sending us those. You've brought us a lot of joy over the past few weeks and they've been coming in from all over the world.

We really enjoyed this one. the Vinyl Resting Place, V-I-N-Y-L, Resting Place, an old record shop, the Vinyl Resting Place. There was a green grocer called Melon Collie, N-E-L-O-N-C-A-U-L-I. And so it seems, the tailor from Belfast, so it seems, a tailor from Belfast so it seems a tailor from Belfast but we were having a bit of a competition when we offering a prize yes and top of the pile comes in from Lynn MacDonald of Airdrie do you remember the Italian cafe jars it was called Bacchialdi's which isn't really Italian it's located around the back of Aldi which is for anyone who is not familiar with low budget supermarkets is exactly that. But Bacchialdi sounds so much better. Bacchialdi, yes. Thank you so much, Lynn, for that. And we will get a special Something Wives with Purple Mugs

sent out to you. But as you say, thanks to all of them. I had some brilliant ones sent me on Twitter as well, including some fictional ones such as polenta to go around and that kind of thing. So thank you for all of those. But we have some correspondents as well, don't we? We do. Janet Worley from Northamptonshire has been in touch. Hi, Susie and Giles. I'm rather curious about the word career, C-A-R-E-E-R.

This word can have both the meaning of a job with stability and progression, but also moving in an uncontrolled way, careering around. Is there any connection in the origin of the two? There absolutely is. And the core idea behind all of the meanings of career is of running or progressing along a course of some kind. And they're all based on the Latin carus, C-A-R-R-U-S, a wheeled vehicle, which of course gave us car. It also gave us chariot. And when career was first used in English, it meant a race course, but also a short gallop at full speed. So from there, the modern sense developed. So you have the stages in a personal's professional employment,

so it's the course along which their working life is running. And then if you imagine a chariot race of rushing headlong and hurtling down that particular course, that will also give you the other sense of career. Excellent. Careering around the corner, that kind of thing. Thank you for that career advice. Mike Horne from Thelwall in Cheshire has written in to say, on your recent podcast about camping words and phrases, you very quickly passed the word rucksack as a simple German derivative. But certainly when I grew up, we wouldn't use this term. My father would have called a bag that he carried on his back a haversack or a knapsack

or even the humble duffel bag that I would take to school with me. Where did any of these terms come from? It seems to me much more mysterious. So what do you think? Okay, thanks for that, Mike. Well, haversack is German as well. So in German, a habersack, so H-A-B-E-R and then sack, was a bag that was used by soldiers to carry oats for their horses. And the word comes from an old dialect German word harbour, meaning oats, and then sack, meaning a sack or a bag. So it was an oat bag for horses originally. A knapsack, again, Germanic. I think it directly came to us from Dutch, actually, but that goes back to the German knappen with the hard K, knappen, which meant to bite

food and then sack again, meaning a bag. So it was first used by soldiers again for carrying food supplies. So it was a snack bag, if you like. And just a reminder that rucksack comes from the German rucksack, which is your rücken is your back. So it's a bag to carry on your back. Well, I hope that answers the question, Mike. And thank you for your postscript. He adds, thanks for your great podcast, which has seen me through the pandemic and now through walking the West Highland way with my knapsack on my back. Oh, and perhaps it's this duffel bag. I forgot to mention that one.

Duffel is a coarse woolen cloth. It's got a really thick nap, and that goes back to Duffel, and that's the name of a town in Belgium where it was originally made. I used to have a duffel coat. Yes, me too. With funny sort of funny buttons. What were those buttons called? Yeah, those toggles.

Those little toggle buttons. Yeah. Toggle buttons. What were those buttons called? Yeah, those toggles. Those little toggle buttons. Yeah. Toggle buttons. We must have done an episode on that, on the duffel coat. There's probably one. Let's do, as winter approaches, let's do one on things

that one wears in the winter. Okay. That's the joy of language. It's limitless. And Susie's capacity for coming up with words that surprise and delight us is limitless too. What have you got in your knapsack today? A trio of interesting words, Susie's capacity for coming up with words that surprise and delight us is limitless too what

have you got in your knapsack today a trio of interesting words Susie Dent okay well some of us I suppose we are now able to move out and about I know that's not the case for everybody so apologies for this although there are still some videnda to see at home and videnda are things that some of us can now return to. They're things worth seeing. So you might just add some Videnda to your list of adventures if you've got a staycation coming up. And don't get me started on whether staycation means staying at home or whether it means staying in your own country, because that is hotly contested almost every day on Twitter. But yes, videnda, things worth seeing. That's the first one.

And to join the videnda are the tasenda. Tasenda, that's T-A-C-E-N-D-A, and they are things that you mustn't speak about. So yes, things that are not to be talked about at all. Tasenda, that could be useful. Yes, link to tacit and tacere, to be talked about at all. Tassenda, that could be useful. Yes, linked to tacit and tacere, to be quiet in Latin. And finally, one that Chaucer was quite fond of, and just tread carefully with this one.

I think we might've covered it in our Valentine's episode, but if you were to call someone a pig's knee in Chaucerian times, you would be calling them darling, your darling. And actually it's not your pig's knee, it's a pig's eye. So it's like pigs nigh or pigs nigh. And it means pig's eye. And for some reason that was seen as an object of affection. So as I say, go carefully with this one,

but it just always makes me smile. But I rather like that. Darling. Oh, you're my pigs knee. No, I'm putting on a funny accent for it. You're my pigsny. Yeah, you've turned Scottish. Do you have a poem for us?

Yes, you're my pigsny. You're my friend. And we had a lovely reaction to the poem by Elizabeth Jennings that I read a week or so ago. Oh, yes, that was lovely. About friendship. So I've been digging up poems about friendship. And I've come across one that, well, actually, it's not a poem. It's the lyric of a song, but I think it works as a poem as well. It's by Cole

Porter. If you're ever in a jam, here I am. If you're ever in a mess, SOS. If you ever feel so happy you land in jail, I'm your bail. It's friendship, friendship, just a perfect blendship. When other friendships have been forgot, ours will still be hot. If you're ever up a tree, phone to me. If you're ever down a well, ring my bell. If you ever lost your teeth and you're out to dine, borrow mine. It's friendship, friendship, just a perfect blendship.

When other friendships have been forgot, ours will still be great. It's friendship, friendship, just a perfect blendship. When other friendships have been forgot, ours will still be it. Lovely. Absolutely gorgeous. We hope that you found it. Lovely. Absolutely gorgeous. We hope that you found it gorgeous too. Not sure whether you will find us gorgeous,

but hopefully the podcast is something that brings you pleasure and joy and a little bit of an oasis as it does to us. As Giles says, please do get in touch at purple at something else dot com. Something Rhymes with Purple is, as always, a Something Else production produced by Lawrence Bassett, Harriet Wells, with additional production from Steve Ackerman, Ella McLeod, Jay Beale and...

Well, I suppose he's somebody's pigs' knee, isn't he? He's not ours anymore. I haven't seen him for such a long time. Golly! Where are you?